In The Church God Wants – All Nations we begin another sermon series. We will see over the next few weeks what the church God wants looks like. On Sunday we saw that God wants a church for all people.
Jesus was traveling around Israel one day he passed by Tyre and Sidon. This was an area where there weren’t really a lot of Jews. This was the area of the ancient Phoenicians – people who sailed the Mediterranean, and people who didn’t know God. Their religion was one of child sacrifice and perverse sexual rituals. How on earth can verse 22 be true? 22 A Canaanite woman from that vicinity came to him, crying out, “Lord, Son of David, have mercy on me! My daughter is suffering terribly from demon-possession.” It doesn’t make it into the translation, but there is almost shock – Behold, a Canaanite woman! This woman did not grow up going to church. She probably didn’t know who the high priest was or what all the sacrifices and festivals meant. She did know that Jesus was the Lord, the Son of David, the promised Savior from sin, and that he could help her.
The trouble that the woman was faced with was a demon-possessed daughter. Demon possession is a difficult thing for me to understand. I’ve never seen it, maybe in a movie. I’ve heard stories from world missionaries who have seen it first hand. It’s frightening. I don’t think that Satan uses demon possession much in Winston-Salem because it wouldn’t really help him. Remember, Satan’s goal is to get you into hell, to destroy you through sin and the guilt that comes with it, to make your life so miserable that you could never believe that God loves you. I’m betting that you won’t see demon possession in your life, you might. I bet you will face a disease like cancer; you’ll suffer through temptations from sexual sins and greed. You’ll struggle to find time to even on Sunday mornings to grow in your relationship with Jesus. When he does, follow the path of this woman. The Canaanite woman goes to the right place. Jesus, have mercy on me! Kyrie eleison!
Want to hear more? Watch this week’s message taken from Matthew 15 – the first in our series The Church God Wants – All Nations.
Book(s): Matthew
Series: The Church God Wants
Tag(s): evangelism
Speaker(s): Fred Guldberg