Mark 7:24-30

When we think about Jesus, and we think about, you know, especially if you've been raised in a church context, if you've been raised in a church home, I think what we tend to do often is domesticate him in our thoughts. The way we think about Jesus, especially, again, if we'd been walking in the faith for a long time, kind of tames him down. We tend to impose our cultural expectations of, you know, what is nice on Jesus, what is polite on Jesus. That is not the Jesus that we see in the Gospel.

And this week really points that out here. The real Jesus cannot be tamed. He cannot be domesticated. I love how C.S. Lewis put it. Maybe you had the blessing, as I did, of reading his allegorical series, The Chronicles of Narnia as a child, or maybe even as an adult. I've read them many times over the course of my life, even into my adult life. And if you have, you know that the symbol of Jesus Christ in those books is Aslan the lion.

And Lewis records one of the characters in those books saying this about Jesus, saying this about Aslan. "He's wild, you know. Not like a tame lion." So we can't tame Jesus down to our expectations, down to our idea of what is nice. And this text today, Mark chapter seven, 24 through 30, is one of those revelations of Jesus that reminds us of that truth.

Because here, we see Jesus have an encounter with a woman that, on first reading, may seem to us to be far from nice, far from polite, even offensive. Well, let's set the context. Really, we've got to understand how we got to this place, in verse 24 here. The beginning of chapter seven, we see Jesus interacting with the Pharisees. You see there in verse five, up on the screen, the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, they're having this dispute with Jesus. They're challenging him.

"Why don't your disciples live according to the traditions of the elders instead of eating their food with unclean hands?" If you've been here the last two weeks, you've seen that whole theme of something being unclean or clean has been what Jesus is going back and forth with the Pharisees and even with his disciples. What does it mean to be clean and acceptable to God? A child of God. Embraced by God. Welcomed into God's kingdom. What does it mean to be unclean?

Unacceptable to God. Held at a distance from God. Not part of his kingdom. Not one of his children. Though those concepts we may speak of in different language today, but those same concepts, we think through those kinds of lenses as we think about people, maybe even as we think about ourselves. So it's that whole theme of clean and unclean that continues now, as in verse 24 and following.

Having had that dispute about clean and unclean, Jesus now ventures outside the borders of Israel into an unclean region, a Gentile region. And he's now going to have this encounter with an unclean woman, and in having this encounter, he will cast out the unclean spirit that is possessing her daughter. So let's pick it up in verse 24: "Jesus got up and he departed from there--" He was in Capernaum at that time. "--He departed from there to the region of Tyre and Sidon."

I realize you may only have limited visibility of this map up on the screen there, but you can check your map in the back of your Bible. Tyre and Sidon, they're coastal cities. They are in what we think of as modern-day Lebanon. That's about 20 miles northwest, roughly, from the area of Galilee, where he had been ministering at this time. Just a little bit of Old Testament connection.

Those names may seem familiar to you when you think about King David and King Solomon, probably the most well-known kings of Israel. It was Tyre and really the king of Tyre, Hiram, who formed an alliance with David and Solomon, and he provided them timber to build the temple with. He provided them skilled artisans. So one time, there was an alliance between this area and Israel, even though it was outside of Israel.

But then in the Maccabean period, kind of the period of history between the two Testaments, that whole region turned against Israel and actually fought against Israel. This area is also known, if you think about the Old Testament books of Kings and Chronicles, you may know the name Jezebel. Jezebel was a wicked wife of one of the kings of Israel that introduced Baal worship into Israel. Jezebel was from Tyre. Jezebel brought that pagan Baal worship into Israel from that whole area.

So that whole area was known in that time as not only a non-Jewish area, outside the borders of Israel; it was known as a very pagan place. It was known as a place where paganism reigned and infected Israel. We read in verse 24 when Jesus arrived in this region, he entered a house. He didn't want anybody to know it, but he could not escape notice. Mark doesn't explain why Jesus decided to travel there. We think he took his disciples. Maybe it was they needed a respite.

They needed time alone before they finished kind of that final leg of his earthly ministry, going all the way to the cross in Jerusalem. Maybe he wanted some privacy, some time alone with his disciples, but that's not what he got. They'd already learned, the people in Tyre and Sidon, about Jesus. We saw that all the way back in chapter three. And so even though Jesus desires some privacy, he could not escape notice.

And mark focuses in on one particular person, a woman in verse 25, that this is really seen in. "Immediately after hearing about him, a woman whose little daughter had an unclean spirit came and fell at his feet." Now the woman was a Greek, a Syrophoenician by birth. And she kept asking him to drive the demon out of her daughter. Who is this woman? Who is this woman? Because you know, people like this woman. I know people like this woman. Just in our culture, it may look a little bit different.

This woman, Mark, first of all, says was a Greek, or that's synonymous with a Gentile. This woman was not a Jew. This woman was not part of what the Jews thought of as God's people. This woman is what we would think of today as somebody who doesn't believe in God, somebody who does not believe in Jesus Christ, who rejects the Gospel. So in your mind, think "Gentile equals unbeliever".

But that's the general description, because then Mark goes on to give a more specific description of her as a Syrophoenician. Now, Phoenicia was that area, that region that Tyre and Sidon were the major coastal cities of. But because Phoenicia belonged to the province of Syria, it was known as Syrophoenicia. What's significant about that? Again, a very pagan place. I was trying to think of modern-day equivalents.

This would be--you know, I don't know how good these equivalents are, but think of maybe Las Vegas. Think maybe of San Francisco. Think about places in the world that are notorious for a lack of believing, of faith in Christ, a lack of functioning churches, places where unbiblical behavior is not only tolerated, it is celebrated. That's this area. That's what this is known as.

So really, let's bring it home: this woman is not only somebody-- the equivalent in our worlds would be somebody who doesn't believe in God, doesn't believe in Jesus, rejects the Gospel. This woman would be the kind of person that you know, that I know, that is living a notoriously unbiblical life. So you fill in the blank.

Even as we continue to go through this scripture today, don't think so much of some woman living over 2000 years ago in a different part of the world; think of women and men that you know, perhaps that are in your family, perhaps that are your friends, people that you like, people that you love, who reject God, who reject Jesus, who are living notoriously unbiblical lives. That is, really, what Mark wants to focus us on here. She is doubly unclean.

She is unclean because she's a Gentile, an unbeliever. She's unclean because she lives in a pagan area and is known for a pagan lifestyle there. You and I know people who would fit that description. Some of us, including myself, were once that: doubly unclean, not coming from a believing household, not coming from a believing family, living a notoriously unbiblical life. Some of us have been rescued out of that double sense of being unclean.

So for the remainder of the sermon, I encourage you to substitute who comes to your mind. Who does the Holy Spirit want you to think about today as the equivalent of that Gentile Syrophoenician woman. What do we know about why this woman was persistently pursuing Jesus? Verse 25 tells us that her little daughter had an unclean spirit. Mark explains that in verse 26 is she was possessed by a demon. "Unclean spirit" is the Semitic term. "Demon" is the Greek term.

Mark uses those somewhat synonymously. Mark doesn't really explain how it is that this little girl came to be possessed by a demon. We do know from scripture, and even from present day experience, that even within a family system, when a family's involved in some way and occultic practices, it can create an opening where members of the family can be involuntarily possessed, taken control of, by a demon. That can still happen today and does happen today.

But what is it we see as she pursues Jesus to rescue her daughter from this demon possession? Well, in verse 27 Jesus' response to her is, really, frankly, it's far from what I expected to see. And at first glance, when I read his response, before I really began to study this, I was put off by his response. Let me read it. "He said to her, 'Allow the children to be satisfied first.

It isn't right to take the children's bread and throw it to the dogs.'" Now, in first reading of that, without any study of that, that seems-- I think the best term I could put on that is harsh or rude. But in the culture that you and I live in today, to say something like that is offensive on a level that would get you labeled as misogynistic, as racist. I mean, I can imagine the disciples whispering to each other, "Did Jesus just call her a dog?" You know, it's that kind of effect.

And so the effect that maybe it has on you, if you've never seen this before, or it's been a while since you read it, the effect it first had on me, I think the effect that it had on his disciples, that is real. But what it shows is that, if that is our first impression, it is a wrong impression. It is a wrong impression on the part of his disciples, because what's really going on here, what we tend to miss, is that Jesus is answering her, he's speaking to her in a parable.

Now we've seen Jesus speak in parables all through Mark up to this point. This is so short, we might not think of it as a parable, but again, remember the basic definition of a parable. A parable is an earthly story that has earthly elements with a heavenly meaning. So let's look at that. So let's look first of all: what are the elements of the earthly story? There is the element, first of all, of children. Who are the children? Imagine a family table.

You know, children coming up to the family table and sitting down for a meal. That's the picture he's kind of creating with this parable. Who are the children? The children, very clearly, are the Jewish people. The children in this parable are the descendants of Abraham.

I mean, write down later for in your notes, if you want to look it up later, Genesis chapter 12 and Genesis chapter 17, where God singled out Abraham, the father of the Jewish people and said, "I'm going to create out of you a nation. I'm going to create out of you a special people. "I'm going to create out of you a people for myself who will belong to me. That promise that God made to Abraham, that's what's reflected here. These are the children of Abraham.

These are the children of God in this parable. What is the children's bread? Again, picture that family table at a meal time, and the children come and they sit down, and what do the parents do? The parents puts plates of food in front of these children, and plates of bread. What is the bread? The bread in this parable is God's blessing to the Jews. The bread in this parable is the realization of that everlasting covenant that we read about, that God formed with Abraham in Genesis 17.

it's mentioned other places as well, but Genesis 17, it's very clear. That covenant, that promise, that God unilaterally makes to Abraham and to his future descendants, that "I'm going to bless you. "I'm going to make you a great nation." It's that promise that was eventually expanded through the prophets that "I'm going to send my Messiah to you." The children's bread is God's blessing to the Jews. And Jesus comes as the fulfillment of that. Okay?

Now we get to the controversial part of this parable. So who are the dogs? The dogs are you and me. The dogs are Gentiles. And again, if that word is new to you, bibically, "Gentile" simply means you're not ethnically Jewish. If you are not ethnically Jewish, you are a Gentile. I am a Gentile. You are a Gentile. And in this parable, we are the dogs. In this parable, this woman is the dog. This woman and her daughter are the dogs.

Now, when you picked your dogs, there's several words that Jesus could have used, he could have used but didn't. He could have used a word that pictures, you know, what I would think of as a street dog. You know those wild-looking, vicious mongrels that you might find that are living wild, that are scavengers, the kind of dog you wouldn't want anywhere near your children. That's not the word that Jesus uses here. Instead, he uses another word.

He uses the word "dog" that would would indicate a house pet. This is the kind of dog, from the word he uses, that you'd have in your home, that would love your children, and your children would love this dog, this pet. This is the kind of dog that would be around your table when you gathered for the family meal. I grew up with dogs, and they would always be there around the table during the family meal. That's the picture.

And that's really what the woman understood, because we see in verse 29, she refers to that very same image, to the dogs under the table. She's thinking "beloved pet". She's not thinking of mangy mongrel street dog here. So those are the elements. And if this is a parable, what is the heavenly meaning of those elements? What's the heavenly meaning of the parable as we put all those elements together?

Well, I think the key is found in verse 27, at the end of the first phrase: "Allow the children to be satisfied first." Now by saying "first", Jesus is not saying, "I don't have any time for you. I'm not going to deal with your daughter and what's wrong with her." By saying "first", Jesus is not at all saying, "You are a Gentile. You are excluded from God's blessing."

By saying "first", Jesus is saying that he has a priority of mission, especially at this point in his mission and his earthly ministry. Walter Hendrickson says it perhaps better than I can, a commentator I often go to on Mark. He said, "God planned that the blessings that are centered in Christ were to be offered first to the Jews, and then later to the Gentiles, to everyone else, to you and to me." So here's the heavenly truth that Jesus is teaching through this earthly parable.

And I've got it up on the screen just because I want it to be absolutely clear. The Jewish people have a special place in the history of salvation. In the way that God planned to save us, the Jewish people have a special place, not special in terms of superior, not special in terms of more deserving, but special, or first, in terms of temporal priority, time. God extended his blessing first to the Jewish people in the sense that that's whom he began to unfold how he was going to save us all.

He did that beginning in the Jewish people, but God never intended to limit his saving work to the Jewish people. And instead, he intended to use the Jewish people, and what he was unfolding among them as he was saving them, he intended to use that to extend a reach all over the world, to reach the Gentiles, all the nations of the world. We see this spoken many times through the prophets, but just look at what Isaiah has to say. Isaiah 49:6.

Isaiah here is recording God the Father speaking to God the Son, to Christ, the Messiah. God says, "It is not enough for you to be my servant, raising up the tribes of Jacob and restoring the protected ones of Israel. I will also make you a light for the nations, to be my salvation to the ends of the earth." What is God saying there? He's saying the Messiah must first raise up the tribes of Jacob, the Jews, but then, the Messiah is to be a light for all the nations, the Gentiles, you and me.

So again, there's no first in terms of they're more deserving, they're more worthy, they are special, they are better; this is first in terms of a temporal priority. Think of it this way: we, if we are saved, we have embraced the Gospel. We have embraced that truth that God has made a way to rescue you and me from sin, the sin that alienates us from him, the sin that separates us, the sin that condemns us to eternal punishment.

He's made a way to provide the righteousness that we can't provide to cover the unrighteousness of your and my sin, your and my rebellion. He's made a way to do that that opens to us the Kingdom of God, that we be can become citizens of the Kingdom of God, children and his family.

And he's made that way initially through what he revealed to the Jews, but in that plan of revealing the Gospel, there would come a time-- there did come a time, I mean this account is on the front end of this, we're on the other side of this-- but there would come a time, and there has come a time, when God would expand that beyond the Jews to you and to me, to all the rest of the world. We read about Paul's acknowledging that.

In Romans 1:16, he says, "This Gospel, this Gospel I was just talking about, I'm not ashamed of this gospel, because it is the power of God for salvation of everyone who believes." Underline "everyone", but then notice what it says next: "to the Jew first and then to the Gentile." There is that temporal priority in Jesus' mission. So we could say it like this: We are very much in debt to the Jewish people.

Not because they're better, not because they got it and we didn't get it, but because it was through the Jewish people that God brought the Messiah, Jesus, the Christ. It was through the Jewish people that we received the Word. It was through the Jewish people that the way of salvation was first opened to us. Now the amazing thing to me is that this woman gets it.

She is, as you read through Mark, she is the first person in the gospel of Mark who, upon first hearing one of the parables of Jesus, gets it, understands it, and responds to it. We've never seen this before. This woman gets this parable, and not only that. In verse 28, we see that she not only understands and accepts what he's saying; she picks up the parable, and she runs with it. She expands the parable.

Look at verse 28: "She replied to him, 'Lord, even the dogs under the table eat the children's crumbs.'" She's not bristling in her pride to what he's just said. She's not offended. She's not put off. Her reply indicates that she understands and she accepts the truth of what Jesus is saying here: that the Messiah has come first to the Jews, and that the time for the Gentiles has not yet come but was coming.

And so she does something that is both kind of witty and shows great wisdom: she takes the very elements of his parable and kind of expands on, adds onto the story. "Even the dogs under the table eat the children's crumbs." I don't know what picture comes up in your mind when you think about a family table with dogs. I grew up with-- we always seemed to have at least two dogs in our household growing up.

And they were indoor pets, and they were beloved, and so they would be in the dining room, around the table when we were eating. I never once recall an episode where we came in and sat down at the table, and my parents took the plates of food from in front of us and said, "No, you wait," and set our plates down for the dogs to eat that food. That never happened. Probably never happened in your household either.

However, I remember many meals-- I'm sure it happened almost at every meal, where, just being the sloppy children that we were, crumbs fell from our plates. Crumbs fell, you know, as we were bringing food to our mouth, fell to the floor, and the dogs would eat them, and sometimes bigger things than crumbs. Sometimes there was some intentional feeding of the dogs from the tables. That's the image that this woman is picking up and adding to the parable here.

She's saying, "Yes, let the children be fed their bread. Don't take away the meal from the children, but allow the dogs under the table to enjoy the crumbs. The scraps. She's indicating "Jesus, I'm not asking you to interrupt your ministry, your mission at this point in your ministry to the Jews. I'm not asking to take you away from what you came to do, bringing God's blessings to the Jews. But I see it as so superabundant that I believe there are crumbs.

I believe there's an overflow, there's an abundance of your blessing, so that even the scraps I can benefit from, even the scraps that I can be blessed from. As I have it up on the screen there, she has faith that God's blessings centered in Christ are abundant, and there is a surplus of God's blessing that falls to the Gentiles. That falls to us. What great faith this woman demonstrates. Now again, this is on the front side.

This is before Jesus went to the cross and did the work that accomplishes our salvation, so we are looking back in time, and it's important for us to ask, "When did God's blessing centered in Christ expand out from the Jews to us, to the Gentiles?" In one sense, it happened at the cross. In other words, what Jesus did there provided for it.

But I think, my personal opinion is, when it really became offered to the rest of us, when figuratively, all people were invited to join the table and eat that bread, I believe was that the day of Pentecost that we read about in Acts chapter two? I won't give you the whole account, but what happened at Pentecost, on the day of Pentecost, Acts two verse four: "They were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in different languages as the Spirit gave them ability for speech."

What was going on there? For the first time, all people from all these different nationalities were gathered to hear the preaching of the Gospel in Jerusalem. And Peter begins to preach, and he's preaching about Jesus and what Jesus did in saving us at the cross. And he's anointed by the Holy Spirit. And God through the Holy Spirit does a miracle.

He takes all these different people, all these people from all these Gentile nations, and he miraculously gives them the ability to hear and understand Peter's preaching in their own native languages. And then he draws them to Christ, and thousands begin to embrace Jesus Christ as savior and Lord that day. That's when I think, really God's blessings begin to spill out to the Gentiles and ultimately to you and me, if you know Jesus as savior and Lord.

This is the beginning of the Gentiles being invited to that banquet, to come up to the table and eat that bread.

So I think we need to ask next, at least where my mind goes is, "What has become of the Jews?" When I think about most Jewish people that I know, when I think about what has happened with Jewish people in history since then, it forces me to ask the question, "Have the Jewish people lost their place in the history of salvation?" I mean, the Jews have largely, not entirely, but during this present period, rejected Jesus as the promised Messiah, as the savior.

We see this even in those first couple of years after Pentecost when the apostles are preaching. Think of Paul preaching in Pisidian Antioch. In Acts chapter 13, he goes to the synagogue where Jews are gathered, like he always did, when he started preaching in a new town. He wants to preach first to the Jews. But what happened in Acts 13? The Jews begin slandering him. They begin arguing against what he preaches.

And so we read in Acts 13:46 that Paul and Barnabas boldly said, "It was necessary for God's message to be spoken to you first--" there's that temporal priority-- "but since you reject it and consider yourselves unworthy of eternal life, we now turn to the Gentiles." Does that mean, when we think about Paul doing this, when we think about maybe what we know is the wider experience of Jewish people today, does that mean that the Gospel is somehow no longer available for Jewish people?

There are people out there who say that. There are Christians out there who embrace something called replacement theology that says God is done with the Jews, and the blessings of Israel have passed to the Church, and there's no more place, no special place for the Jews. I believe that ignores history. I believe that ignores both Old Testament and New Testament scripture.

I believe that is directly contradicted by what Paul says in Romans 11: "I ask you then," he writes, "the Jews did they stumble? Did they stumble in an irrevocable fall?" In other words, "Did they lose their blessing? Did they lose the ability to come to saving faith in Christ?" And he answers his own question: absolutely not. But by their transgression, by their rejection of salvation, salvation has come to the Gentiles to make the Jews jealous. And that's the period we're living in.

We're living in a period of salvation history right now where the Jews, for the most part, have rejected the Gospel of salvation through Christ. But that does not mean that God is done with the Jews. We read elsewhere in the New Testament that there's coming in the end times a great spiritual awakening of the Jews where he will draw them en masse to Jesus Christ. We just have yet to see that. And so where are we?

In the meantime, God's blessings, centering in Christ, they are now offered both to the Jews and to the gentiles to us. So if you're, you're Jewish, you can embrace Jesus as savior and Lord, you can be saved by the Gospel. If you're a Gentile, which is probably most, if not all of us, you can embrace Jesus and be saved as you embrace him as savior and Lord through the Gospel. Paul records in Romans 10: "for there is no distinction now between the Jew and the Greek, the Gentile.

For the same Lord is Lord of all who richly blesses all who call on him." You know, this promise has become even more meaningful for me just within the last year, and I don't know if I'm going to get through this without some emotion. A little over a year ago, my oldest son Evan began dating a girl, Hannah. And Cindy and I instantly liked Hannah, but there was a big issue. Hannah was Jewish.

Hannah did not recognize Jesus as who he claimed to be, but we attempted to love her, and Hannah saw something in our son Evan that she knew was different. And so she agreed to go to church with him. And it's through going to church and hearing the preaching of the Gospel at the church that she was in, it's through meeting with my wife Cindy, regularly asking or answering her questions that Hannah, in the last year, has come to saving faith and has embraced Jesus Christ as savior and Lord.

And I knew that that had happened, because I'd had conversations with her myself, but it was driven home this week, even as I was studying this passage and I was talking with Hannah and Evan on the phone, and they were recounting a sermon that they'd heard last Sunday about Abraham sacrificing Issac, sacrificing his son. And you may know that account.

And it was Hannah, not even Evan, but it was Hannah who said, "Yes, and that points to what God the father did in sacrificing his own son, Jesus, the Christ in our place for our salvation." And I knew, praise God. And so they're going to be married on December 31st, and we're just rejoicing for this very kind of miracle that we see that is presently available both to Jews and Gentiles, to you and to me as well as to any Jewish person who recognizes Jesus as savior and Lord. What was the result?

We see the result in the miracle that is described in verses 29 and 30. Jesus tells her after hearing all this, "Woman, because of this reply, you may go. The demon has gone out of your daughter." And she doesn't wait. She leaves. And when she went back to her home, verse 30, "she found her child lying on the bed, and the demon was gone." What great faith. What great faith. She leaves Jesus. She doesn't even demand that Jesus goes with her.

She leaves believing that Jesus can heal her daughter, can cast out that demon without touching her, without even seeing her from a distance. What great faith that this woman exhibits. So let me leave you with two concluding points. I think, first of all, this woman is a picture of genuine faith to us. You know, Matthew records that. Matthew records this same episode in his Gospel, and he adds a detail that Mark does not include. Matthew 15:28, Jesus says, "Woman, you have great faith."

Jesus commends this woman for her faith. And yes, she demonstrates faith in that she gets the parable, she understands the parable, she responds to the parable, and she demonstrates great faith in believing that Jesus can not only give her the bread that saves her, but the bread of healing of her daughter, even from a distance, without being personally present. Even more for you and me today, I think this woman is a model of faith in her humility.

You know, you and I, maybe in our culture, if we had heard Jesus respond in some way like this, we would have been, you know, we would bristle in our pride. We'd be a bit offended. We'd be a bit put off by the harshness of what he's saying there, calling us dogs. She accepts that. She receives that. She embraces the meaning that is behind it. And, she doesn't demand that somehow Jesus is wrong that the Jews get priority over Gentiles.

No, she just says, "Jesus, I will take whatever mercy you can extend to me." And that's a picture of real, genuine faith: when we know that we deserve nothing, when we know that we don't even deserve the scraps that fall from God's table of blessing, but in grace, God gives them to us, and in grace, God extends his blessings, his bread, from the children of Israel, to us, the Gentiles. She embraces that. She accepts that. She begins to live in that. That is what true saving faith looks like.

And then secondly, I think there's another lesson here when we think about this theme of unclean and clean. You know, again, Jesus goes from a dispute of what is clean and unclean. He goes to an unclean region, he interacts with this unclean woman, and he casts out this unclean spirit from her daughter. I hope you see that Jesus crosses boundaries to make the unclean clean. Maybe you're here this morning and you feel in some way unclean. Maybe it's something about your background.

Maybe you didn't come from a Christian home. Maybe you've got stuff in your past that you would say, you know, if other people knew this about me around me, they wouldn't even want to be anywhere near me. In whatever way that you feel unclean, Jesus has crossed boundaries to make you clean. Jesus makes the unclean clean. So we are here not as proper, nice Christians; we're here as unclean people who, in Jesus, by his righteousness, have been made clean.

And that's how we ought to represent ourselves. I am not clean in and of myself. I am clean only as Jesus has made me clean, and the same is true of you and me. And the corollary, I think, is that we now as the saved, as the church, we must do what Jesus does: we must cross boundaries. We must follow him wherever he goes. He desires to lead us across boundaries, into places that are unclean. He desires to lead us into relationships with people who are unclean.

He desires to use us in those relationships to help cast out what is unclean in those people, if we're willing to go, if we're willing to leave the safety and comfort of the walls of our church and the circles of our friends and our family and cross those boundaries. I'll end with the lines of a hymn. It's a modern hymn. It was written in 2017, "Beyond All Barriers", that really I think encapsulates who we're to be now as those who have been cleansed in Christ.

"Now your mercy calls to us to share what we received. Out of these unseen walls to prove what we believe. See, the barriers are all gone. We live the love we know. Fear and comfort will not rule. Love calls and we will go." Let's pray. Jesus, we worship you. That you cross whatever barriers exist in each of our lives to save us, to take us out of our uncleanness and make us clean before God.

Lord, if there's anyone here this morning who has not yet experienced that, even this morning, I pray that you would draw them to Jesus and allow them to experience his cleansing work. Father God, we worship you for your grand plan of salvation and that you began your saving work all the way back in the garden, but you began to unfold it in particular through the formation of the Jewish people.

And yet it was always your desire to use the Jewish people to extend the plan of salvation to us, the Gentiles. And we're thankful, Lord, that that plan is not yet completed. There's still an opening for Gentiles and Jews to come in. There is still that coming place in history, Lord, when you will create great revival among the Jewish people and bring many back to you.

Lord, we pray that we would be used by you wherever you send us, across whatever boundaries, that Jesus Christ would be lifted up as Messiah, as savior, as Lord, as king. Amen.