Well, happy Mother's Day. Wish all of our moms a very happy Mother's Day. Hey, can I just say this that we want to say that we love you? We pray that today will be a day that we honor you, and we appreciate you and your part in passing faith along to the next generation.
I'm talking about your sons, your daughters, your grandsons, your granddaughters, and so to all of our moms, our grandmothers, to our wives who are helping to pass faith to the next generation. Thank you, God bless you, and we appreciate your legacy. I want to preach today an encouraging message to moms, but I assure you of this. This is for everyone.
It's not like, hey, man, I came to that Mother's Day message, and he just spoke to moms, and I'm a dad. They really applied to me. I'm not a woman. I'm a man.
They really applied to me. This message applies to all of us. As a matter of your mom, a dad, a young, old, married, single, this message applies. I want to preach today from a text about a mom and her great faith.
And here's a woman who's in crisis, a mother who's watching her child suffer, a mother who had run out of options, but she refuses to give up. It is a story of great faith. I'm saying that because this is what Jesus said. Jesus is going to say, a woman, your faith is great.
And here's the thing. If we're honest with ourselves, all of us in this room today would say this. I could use more faith. I think we would say this, that if Jesus could describe my faith to me, I would appreciate it if he said to me, Chad, you are a man of great faith.
I think that you would say the same thing, that that would be a neat way for Jesus to describe our faith. There are moments in our life when what we believe about God gets tested. If you're a mom, if you've watched your child suffer, your faith has been tested. When your prayers seem to go unanswered, your faith is being tested.
When your life feels out of control, your faith is being tested. But here's the truth. Faith grows when what we believe about God meets a moment where we must trust him. Let me say that again.
Faith grows when what we believe about God meets a moment where we must trust him. And that's what we see in our passage today. A crisis moment. A woman's crisis becomes the soil where great faith grows.
And so our question today is not do we have faith. No, that's not the question. The question is will our faith grow when it is tested? I want to appreciate this morning.
I'm message entitled, Great Faith we have your Bibles, we're in Matthew chapter 15. Matthew chapter 15, we're going to begin in verse number 21 if you would stand with me on the reading of God's word. The Bible says and then Jesus, he went and answered to part into the coast of Tyron Seiden and behold a woman of Canaan came out of the same coast and cried at him saying, have mercy on me, O Lord. Thou son of David, my daughter is grievously vexed with the devil, but he answered her not a word.
And just disciples came and besought him and said, sent her away for she cryeth after us. But then he answered and said, I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel. Then came she and worshipped him saying, Lord help me. The answer to said is not me to take the children's bread and to cast it to dogs.
And she said, truth, Lord, yet the dogs eat the crumbs which fall from their master's table. Then Jesus answered and said unto her, oh woman, great is thy faith, be it unto you, even as thou wilt and her daughter was made whole from that very hour. Father, we come to you today. God, thank you for moms.
Thank you for moms who operate by faith. Thank you for moms who seek you who come to you Lord. Moms who have found themselves desperate to see you meet their child's greatest need. Today teach us what about faith and about how our faith can grow.
Or it may we be people of great faith. And we also have great faithfulness to you. I pray this in Jesus name, amen. And amen.
The Bible has a lot to say about faith. And a lot of descriptions about people's faith. The Bible talks about a weak faith, a strong faith, a bold faith, a rich faith, and a body faith, a steadfast faith. It can be tried to be dead, precious, common, unfain, working, obedient.
And there's other ways of faith to describe. But in our text, Jesus describes faith as being great. It only happened two times. Only two times where someone said to have had a great faith.
First was the centurion who came to Jesus and said, he'll kill my soldier from a great distance. And Jesus says, greater faith. I have not found it all of Israel. And the second time that he describes someone's faith is being great is here in our text today.
I want to think about this woman though. Calling her faith great. It is great. She's a pagan.
She didn't grow up with revelation. She didn't grow up with the prophet. She didn't grow up with scripture. She didn't grow up with the word of God.
At least she grew up serving false gods. She served at false altars. And yet here's a woman who's coming to Jesus. She's going to address him as the Messiah, of Israel.
She has nowhere else to go. She comes to him and Jesus is going to describe her faith as great faith. How did that happen? How can it happen in our lives?
Five things, number one. Faith begins in desperation. Look at verse 22. She says, have mercy on me.
She calls Jesus the Lord, not the son of David, have mercy on me. And I think this is interesting. Is that she's not the one who's vexed with the devil. It's her daughter who's vexed with the devil.
daughter who's hurting, but when she comes to Jesus, she didn't say have mercy on my kid, what she say? Have mercy on me. I mean, this woman is desperate. She has so much compassion for her child that when she sees her child hurting, she's like, I can't take it anymore.
She's reached a point of desperation. And when we love someone deeply, their pain becomes our pain. This is a desperate mother. You can imagine all the things that she's tried.
I mean, being a pagan, she's been down at the pagan temple. She's brought sacrifice to the pagan deity. She's probably become before some type of witch doctor. She's taken advice from people.
She's tried everything that she could possibly think of. And now Jesus has come up into the coast of the direns. She said, you know what? That is the Messiah of the Jews, but I've got to run after Him.
I am desperate. Nothing's worked. She's out of options. She comes to the Messiah of the Jews and says, have mercy on me.
And here's the truth. Desperation is often the birthplace of great faith. What's the last time you've been desperate before God? What's the last time you were desperate in prayer?
Desperate for your own salvation? Desperate for your kid? Desperate for your family? Desperate for direction in your life?
Listen to me. The more desperate the situation, the more room there is for God to work. Desperation drove this woman to Jesus. But what matters next is where she places her faith.
Desperation, right? Drove her to Christ, but it is her faith. It's who she's putting her faith in that makes all the difference. She cries out to this Lord, son of David, right?
This is no accident. She's identifying Jesus as the Lord, the Messiah, the Savior. She doesn't know everything, but she knows enough that he's the one. She's got to come to him.
Great faith is not about how much faith you have. It's about who your faith is in. Can I say that again? It's not about how much faith you have.
It's about who your faith is in. You can have a whole lot of faith in the wrong thing. It's not going to do anything for you. But you can have a little bit of faith in the person of Christ.
You have a little bit of faith in God, and it can do great things for you. Just to illustrate, if you're in an airplane and it's going down and you can strap on a parachute, jump out of a plane, you're exercising some faith. You're putting faith in an object. The object is the parachute.
You jump out of an airplane with a parachute, pull the cord. You've got faith that the parachute is going to land you a softly down to the ground. But if you're in an airplane and it's going down and you just jump out of the airplane, you don't have a parachute. And as you jump out, you say, I believe.
Geronimo, man, you're going all the way to the ground. That's foolishness. What? Or even better, who is your faith in?
It is the object of your faith that makes the difference. And we cannot have faith in faith. That's foolishness. We got to have faith in a person.
And the person is Jesus Christ. So when she comes, she doesn't know a lot, but she knows who to come to. And she may not even have a large amount of faith, but she's putting what she does have in the right person. She's got a trustworthy object.
She's shifting her faith from idols from false hope to the person of Christ. And faith becomes great when it rests in a great God and a great Savior. You know what Jesus is going to say two chapters from now? He's like, if you had faith the size of the grain of a mustard seed, you could say to this mountain, be thou removed and it happened.
And I'm going to tell you, in the day that Jesus said that, that was like, ah, that's hogwash, man. What are you talking about? Move a mountain? You can't move a mountain.
You give it all the effort you want. You can't move a mountain. You're going to have to see it, aren't you? You might watch Gold Rush.
I'm a Gold Rush fan. So Rick Ness and Rally Valley, that dude has moved a mountain. Anybody watching? I mean, he's moved millions of cubic yards of dirt to get down to the bottom of Rally Valley, where he's looking for gold.
So when we hear move a mountain, we're like, you know, we've got the right equipment, you've got the right, you know, a strategy, you've got the right, I mean, you can move a mountain, but in Jesus' day, when people had shovels and picks and pickaxes, you weren't moving no mountain. That was impossible, which is the point. Jesus said with faith in God, all things are possible. You see, just a little bit of faith in the right object.
Great things can happen. Jesus says this woman has great faith, one, because she came to him. She's putting her faith in the right object. Charles Spurgeon said, if you believe Christ a little, he will bless you a little.
But if you believe him up to the hilt, he will bless you to the full. Your faith shall never outrun the manifestations of divine love. Listen to me, your faith will never outrun the resources at God's disposal. So here's what she does.
She comes to Jesus, right? She comes to the right person. But what happens next would cause most people to walk away. And yet for her, she has a faith that refuses to quit.
Look what happens. She comes to him, she says, Lord Jesus, have mercy on me. You know what the text said? He answered her not a word.
She comes and she makes a request and she gets the silent treatment. He doesn't say anything. He doesn't say, yes, he doesn't say no, he doesn't say slow, he doesn't say, wait, he doesn't say, maybe he doesn't say, one day, hey, she comes, she's asking for help. And it says, he answered her not a word.
She gets the silent treatment. It's hard, isn't it? You ever prayed where you felt like you were getting the silent treatment? It's difficult.
She's right in front of Jesus. She's in desperation. She's come to the right object. She is trusting that he can and when she asks for it, he answers her not a word.
But then he gets worse. Not only does he not say anything, but his disciples come along and say, hey, look, look, she's bugging us. She's coming after us. Send her away.
Don't just give her the silent treatment, man. You don't have to give her what she's asking for. Say, move along. Nothing to be seen here.
Just get on about your business. So she's listening to the disciples and this is resistance. You ever prayed and felt resistance? You ever prayed and things start happening in your life?
This is the exact opposite of what I was asking for. This feels tougher, not easier. This feels more difficult, not better. I'm praying, but I'm getting some resistance.
And then you think, I think the answer is going to be no. And so you just stop. She got the silent treatment. She got resistance.
And then watch this. She gets what would appear to be rejection. Because then Jesus turns and says, I've come only to the lost sheep of Israel. You're not from Israel.
You're from Tyron's side. You're a Phoenician. I only come. I do the lost sheep of Israel.
I think most people would have walked right right here. Like, oh, you know what? Help me. I can't eat for help.
You don't want to help me. Fine. I'm going to move along. Right?
I'm getting out of here. But instead, she prostrates herself before Christ. She humbles herself at his feet. She presses in and she says, Lord, help me.
She's desperate. She's not going anywhere. She's got the silent treatment. She's gotten resistance.
She's gotten what could be perceived as outright rejection. She's going nowhere. Lord, help me. And then the Lord says something.
When you read it, it sounds insulting. It does. It sounds like a flat-out insult, right? He says, it's not right to take the children's bread to throw it to the dogs.
That would probably do a lot of people in. But look at her comeback. And listen, let me just say that he's not insulting her, by the way. And she knows it.
He's not. He's drawing her faith out of her. She responds. She says, yes, Lord.
But even the dogs eat the crumbs. How many got a house dog? If you know how it works, some falls off the table. Boy, I mean, they're there.
Lickety split. And a lot of times it's not even something falls off the table. It's, here, my, my, my, my, right? Come.
And so, what's he saying? It's not good, right? To give the bread of the children to the dogs. She says, yeah, but even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from the table.
You know what she's saying? I don't need whatever. I don't need everything that's on the table. I just need one crumb.
And one crumb from you is enough. Jesus says, great is your faith. She keeps going. She keeps asking.
She keeps seeking. She keeps knocking. It's a great faith refuses to quit even when the answer is delayed by silence, by perceived rejection, by resistance. It doesn't stop.
How many of us have stopped praying way too soon? We stopped because we've received silence and the God's silence was no or we felt resistance. We thought resistance was no. We felt rejection and we thought rejection was no.
And then it was delay. And we said, you know what? I'm just going to give up. But great faith says, I'm not leaving.
No. I'm at the feet of Jesus. I'm not going anywhere. And the question becomes, how does that happen?
And how did it happen for this woman? How does she come to the conclusion? I'm not going anywhere. I'm going to stay at the feet of Jesus even when I feel the answer is no.
When I feel resistance, silence. When I feel perhaps even rejection. How does she keep moving? Why is it she didn't quit?
Because she sees something about Jesus. Now listen, what brought her there was desperation. But what keeps her going is what she believes about the character of Christ. You see, faith sees who Jesus really is.
So when what we hear is an insult. Hey, it's not good to take the bread of the children, cast it to the dogs. What we see is an insult. She understands that he actually could be calling her, right?
To the table. Truth, Lord, that even the dogs eat the crumbs. She understands or she perceives something about the character of Christ. I think that in her heart she says, truth, truth, but even the dogs eat the crumbs that she believes that he's merciful, that he's good, that he's able, that he will treat her with mercy.
You see, great faith is rooted in the right view of who Jesus is. If you think God is distant and far away, you're not really going to pray to him. If you think God is some far away distant being who doesn't really get involved in the affairs of men and especially in the affairs of your life, that's not a God you're seeking. If you believe that God is uncaring, that's the way that she'd perceive what Jesus said.
That's really uncaring, right? But we know how the masters are who had the dogs in the house. They care even about their little puppies. If she perceived that he was uncaring, I mean, she wouldn't persist.
And if that's the way you perceive God is that God doesn't care, he doesn't care about me, right? You won't persist. But when you know that he's good, that he's loving, that he's merciful, you keep coming even when you perceive silence, even when you think you're in delay. Because the clearer you see Jesus, the stronger your faith becomes.
And here's one I'll tell you. We've got to get to a place where we see past the seed and we see to the harvest. So back to chapter 17, when he says, if you had faith, the size of a mustard seed. When you think about that mustard seed, and Jesus was, you know, he was using this illustration that meant something to the Jews.
But for us, a mustard seed is a really, really, tiny seed. But a mustard plant grows into this enormous plant. It's like this tiny seed produces one of the greatest plants. And he says, you've got to see past the seed.
You've got to see the harvest. See, we, we, how do we see past the seed of our trust to the harvest? We've got to see Jesus for who he is. The more we see Jesus for who he is, the more capable we are of seeing what the harvest is.
See Jesus. Right? When I stand up here and say, hey, look, past the seed of faith and we got to see the harvest. What?
Well, when I say, look, we just got to see Jesus for who he is. That he's kind, that he's loving, that he's caring, that he's already taking care of our greatest need. And because he's taking care of our greatest need, we can trust him to take care of our every need. So when we connect it to this, we've already exercised great faith.
And I tell you this, the greatest faith you'll ever exercise is your faith in the finished work of Jesus Christ. To raise you up from the dead, to move you from a place of being on the road to hell, to being toward the realities of heaven. There's nothing greater than that. So you've already seen the goodness and the kindness and the mercy of the Lord.
You saved, right? And so today, if we're like, hey, if Jesus, I care about my greatest need, he can provide for my every need. I can see his goodness. I can see his kindness.
I got to see beyond the seed to the harvest of my faith. This woman saw the goodness and the kindness and the mercy that was in Jesus. Her great faith perceived the character of Christ. And now watch what happens.
Her faith is rewarded. Faith receives from Jesus. Look at verse 28, Jesus responds and says, oh, woman, greatest your faith, be it unto you or let it be even as you have desired. That phrase, let it be in English.
If we were to translate that phrase, let it be into English. The way we translate that is the word amen. It's amen. So when you pray and you say, in Jesus' name, amen.
What you're saying is the very thing that I have prayed for. Let it be so in tune with the will of God and the way of God and the word of God. Let it be so in tune with God's ways that he gives it so that God's able to say what I'm saying, let it be, amen. And here's Jesus having heard her request, but he also saw her faith and he amends it.
He sees what she says, he sees her faith and he's like, amen to that. Let it be, oh, woman, great is your faith. Let it be even as you have desired. And immediately her daughter is healed.
And don't miss this moment after great solids, after testing, after resistance, but also after her persistence. Jesus says, great is your faith. Again, that happens twice in the scriptures and she's the second one with little knowledge through great difficulty without giving up because she continued to trust in him. She demonstrated great faith in Jesus' woman of great faith be it unto you even as you have desired.
Now what you hear me clearly on this though, when we talk about moving mountains and all of us probably got some mountains that we want to be moved and I don't want you walking away from here today thinking, man, every time I pray, I just pray in faith God's going to move that mountain. Can I say this to sometimes God moves the mountain? But sometimes God moves you. Both are miracles.
Sometimes we pray and what we ask for, the answer that we receive is exactly what we wanted. It's what I ask for. It's awesome. I pray in faith and Jesus answered my prayer.
It's awesome. But sometimes the greater work is what God does inside of you. You see, faith is not trusting God to give you what you want. Faith is trusting God to do the right thing.
That's the bottom line of the message. Bottom line is great faith is not trusting God to do what you want. It's trusting God to do what is right. Sometimes God moves the mountain.
But sometimes God moves you. Come on, let me speak to you for just a moment because this text, this is you. This is your life. This is who you are.
This is a picture of you, a mother bringing her child to Jesus and refusing to stop. So hear this, mom. Don't stop. Don't stop praying for your children.
Don't stop. Don't stop bringing them to Jesus. Don't stop. Don't stop believing that God can work.
Do not stop. Don't stop even when you don't see change. Don't stop. Don't stop even when what you hear is silence.
Don't stop. Even when you feel discouraged. Don't stop because great faith stays at his feet. Listen, that's not just for moms though.
That's for all of us. Whatever your crisis is today, bring it to Jesus. And you stay there at his feet. But the greatest act of faith, and I've already mentioned it, but the greatest act of faith that we can have is trusting Christ as our Savior.
Like this woman, she cried for mercy. She came to the right person and she trusted him. And Jesus responded. You know what the Bible says?
For by grace when you say through faith. That not of yourself. It is the gift of God. Not of works.
That's any mention of those. Can I tell you this? That you won't find anyone in heaven who's there because of good works. Period.
Not happening. No one in heaven is in heaven because they are good or because they have done good. You know what you'll find in heaven exclusively? Only people who have been forgiven by the grace of God.
That's it. The only way is to be forgiven by the grace of God. So today, if you've never trusted Christ as your Savior, I'm telling you, you won't have great faith. Here's the greatest faith that you can display.
Admit your need. Turn to Jesus and trust him. And he will be his response. He'll move you.
He'll move you. He'll move you from death to life. He'll move you from being crippled and sinned to being healed by grace. He'll move you from an expectation of hell to the anticipation of heaven's realities.
The greatest faith that you can ever exhibit is putting your faith and trust in a personal Savior. This name is Jesus. If you've never trusted Christ, let today be that day. Moms, if your kids have not yet trusted Christ, the solvers open to you.
Let's come to the feet of Jesus. Let's not stop. Let's not stop praying. Let's not stop bringing.
Let's not stop. Even when we perceive silence, even when we perceive resistance, let's not stop. Even when we perceive delay, let's not stop. Let's not stop because we see the goodness of Jesus for who he is.
Let's keep praying. Let's look to Jesus to say something about us that he said about this woman. Great faith. Be it unto you, even as you have desired.
I'm going to tell you something. Jesus, amen in your prayer. Now you've got something. Brother Randy's going to come and have a invitation today.
If you need to be saved, the solver's open to you. If you need to pray for your child, your family, the solver's open to you. If you would please stand with me this morning, Brother Randy's going to lead us in a song as we sing, as God's Holy Spirit moves upon your heart. You respond to him today.