Her daughter's spiritual condition was severe. Matthew and his parallel account of these events tell us that it was a severe condition. You'd say, well, any unclean spirit is severe. Yeah, well, there are degrees, and this one seems to be a higher degree of satanic activity.
Satan and sin respect nothing, and that is what makes them enemies of God, enemies of God's people. This is Cross-Reference Radio with our pastor and teacher Rick Gaston. Rick is the pastor of Calvary Chapel, Mechanicsville. Pastor Rick is currently teaching through the book of Mark.
Please stay with us after today's message to hear more information about Cross-Reference Radio, specifically how you can get a free copy of this teaching. And now here's Pastor Rick with a brand new study called Odd Methods of God in Mark Chapter 7. We are in the Gospel according to Mark Chapter 7. If you have your Bibles, please turn there. May the Holy Spirit fill this place. May we all just receive what he has for us. May he give us a robust blessing.
Oh, that would be wonderful. Verses 24 through 37. From there he 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. For a woman whose young daughter had an unclean heart heard about him, and she came and fell at his feet. The woman was a Greek Syrophoenician by birth, and she kept asking him to cast the demon out of her daughter. But Jesus said to her, Let the little children be filled first, for it is not good to take the children's bread and throw it to the little dogs. She answered and said to him, Yes, Lord, yet even the little dogs under the table eat from the children's crumbs. Then he said to her, for this saying, Go your way, the demon has gone out from your daughter.
And when she had come to her house, she found the demon gone out and her daughter lying on the bed. Again departing from the region of Tyre and Sidon, he came through the midst of the region of Decapolis to the Sea of Galilee. Then they brought to him one who was deaf and had an impediment in his speech, and they begged him to put his hand on him. And he took him aside from the multitude and put his fingers in his ears, and he spat and touched his tongue. Then looking up to heaven, he sighed and said to him, Ephrathra, that is, be opened. Immediately his ears were opened and the impediment of his tongue was loosed, and he spoke plainly. Then he commanded them that they should tell no one, but the more he commanded them, the more widely they proclaimed it. And they were astonished beyond measure, saying, He has done all things well.
He makes both the deaf to hear and the mute to speak. It's not uncommon for God to work in a perplexing way, even a very, very disappointing way according to our personal standards. I had a friend years ago, all of his theology was probably built into this one statement.
He didn't have much else, but he did have this. He told me that his mom told him, he was an older man at this point in life, he said his mom told him that God worked slowly and mysteriously. Well, it doesn't take long to know that that is true. God does take his time too often for us, but he is right all the time. And he makes sure he gets this into the scripture so that we begin to learn this lesson and begin to learn what there is to learn through God's odd methods.
As I mentioned, perplexing on the smaller side, disappointing on the larger side, but in these methods there are unseen benefits. They are unseen initially, but in time, if we remain faithful, we may find a harvest of information from just waiting for the Lord. Being a bystander to the Lord's work is quite important.
It's very significant. In fact, as we go through this section, we have to remember the apostles are bystanders through all that is going on. It is ministering to them. Peter never forgot it, so he tells it to Mark, and Mark communicates it in such a way that it pulls us right into the moment and it makes us not only interested in what's going on then, but it allows us to relate it to our own lives, to better serve the Lord. So let's take a run of verses of God telling his people that his methods are often odd and perplexing and disappointing, but they are his methods and we are to submit to these things knowing that he is not only sovereign, but he is love. Well, the first is one that most of us are very familiar with, Deuteronomy 29 29. The secret things belong to Yahweh our God, but those things which are revealed belong to us and to our children forever that we may do all the words of this law. Psalm 25 verse 2, it is the glory of God to conceal a matter, but the glory of kings is to search out the matter.
Ecclesiastes 3, he has made everything beautiful in its time. Also he has put eternity in their hearts, except that no one can find out the work that God does from beginning to end. So what we're getting is God is saying, yeah, I'm going to do things you don't get. Hang in there.
I'm telling you in advance, I know what you're going through. Romans 8 28, another familiar verse, we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to his purpose. Who knows that? Those who belong to the Lord, because those who do not belong to the Lord do not receive that. They scoff at such revelations from the throne of God. And then one more very popular one that we don't want to lose sight of, as we go through life and we get slammed by things and we just scratch our heads or it just breaks our heart, Isaiah 58 verse 8.
I'll pause before I read it. Remember this prophet Isaiah ministered for a long time. And he saw a lot of things in his life, good and bad, miraculous and not so miraculous. And yet he's still standing and he's still being God's prophet. And he says to us, God's speaking through him, my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says Yahweh. We accept that by faith. And that's going to count.
Maybe we don't see it now, but it will count. And this morning we have two odd methods before us with Christ ministering to the needs of people that came in contact with him and submitted to him. Verse 24 now, from there he 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. Well, these two cities Tyre and Sidon are cities with an illustrious, though pagan, past.
These were two of the ancient richest, even oldest, amongst the oldest cities in the ancient world, famed for their arts, their work in pottery and glass. And of course Tyre was one of the leading cities in the commerce of the world in her day. Ezekiel had much to say. In fact, many of the prophets had much to say about Tyre. But Ezekiel's is probably one of the most outstanding prophecies fulfilled in detail in phases. And if you are a student of the Bible, you have to come to learn that many of the prophecies given to us in the Old and New Testament alike are fulfilled in phases. They're not always filled instantly.
And this is one of them. So Ezekiel, I don't want to take the time to read all of Ezekiel 26 verses 3 through 5, where the prophet is saying, you're going to be judged Tyre and you're going to be leveled, as smooth as a rock. And then there are going to be fishermen that after your ruins have been piled up, they'll stretch their nets out on those ruins and mend their nets and disentangle those nets. Well, in the days of Ezekiel, Nebuchadnezzar the king sieged Tyre and he leveled mainland Tyre. But just a half a mile offshore was the island Tyre.
And he could not get to it. And it was a fortress. It was a palace on the sea. And it continued to thrive for another 240 years. So if you lived in Ezekiel's day and you heard the prophet say Tyre is going to be leveled and fishermen are going to be mending their nets on the debris, you'd say the prophecy failed.
But it did not. Alexander the Great comes along and he takes much of the rubble and the ruin that Nebuchadnezzar left behind from mainland Tyre and he builds a causeway going out a half mile to offshore Tyre. And between that causeway and Alexander's navy and a bunch of other little things here and there, he conquers it and he levels it.
And into modern times, fishermen mended their nets on the debris that were there. And so there's an example of God giving a prophet clear vision of future events but it being delayed and apparently being unfulfilled to at least several generations. God, even though his methods are odd, they are true. And the righteous know it. And so what do we do when we are faced with odd methods of God? We suffer and we wait. We prove our faith that way.
Hell has no defense against such opposition to his seeds of doubt. We overcome by just resolving because we know there is enough fact in the Bible to not depart from. There is enough. That's all I need. I don't have to understand every jot and every tittle just enough. And I can live off of that and thus man shall not live by bread alone but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. How do you do that if you don't understand it all?
By faith built on what you do understand. So this, he arose from the region of Tyre inside in these cities with rich history which really we don't get much of why did he go up there? Well that comes now, verse 25, for a woman whose young daughter had an unclean spirit heard about him and she came and fell at his feet. Well, again, he seems to have gone way out of his way to come up to Tyre and this is the only event that we, miraculous event, that we know that took place.
We knew he tried to get away from the crowds to get a little rest but word got around, he's here. And so she seeks for him. At some point this mother realized her daughter's spiritual condition was severe. Matthew, in his parallel account of these events, tell us that it was a severe condition. You'd say, well, any unclean spirit is severe. Yeah, well, there are degrees and this one seems to be a higher degree of satanic activity. Satan and sin respect nothing and that is what makes them enemies of God, enemies of God's people. Really, you know, when you think about it, Satan is not an enemy of God, he's our enemy and so he is therefore God's but in this sense, God has, if God has any enemies it's because he's allowing them to be his enemy.
He could just turn them off and snuff them out and end it right, just like that. So he uses Satan for his high purpose of populating eternity with those who believe in him sight unseen and that marks, that's a great distinction between us and the angels. The angels see God and they have free will. Well, at least they had it as perfected now and that day was decided when a third of the angels rebelled and they were booted.
Well, I digress. Verse 26 is where we are. It tells us the woman was a Greek Syrophoenician by birth. In other words, she's really Gentile and that's significant to the story and, you know, she's under the Syrian rule and she's from the cities of Tyre and Sidon, Phoenician cities, she's Greek. She kept asking him, it tells us here in verse 26, she's persistent because her need is urgent.
Matthew notes that she first addressed him as Lord, son of David. She's a Greek. That's not for her.
That's for the Jews. But then as she continued to address him, she addressed him as Lord and I think that what that brings out to us is she's sort of clumsy. She knows he's going to help. She's heard about what he has done. She knows this Messiah, this Jewish Messiah is her hope and that the great principle of life is not race, it is faith.
She's got that much and she knows that he's healed all these people. It sort of reminds us of Rahab. Rahab, she figured it out. These Jews are conquering everybody they come in touch with and now they're here at Jericho.
I'm siding with them. Why didn't everybody else figure it out? Well, that's why their judgment is just and upon them. Why didn't the Pharisees figure it out?
Why couldn't they see his miracles and understand that he was everything he said he was? Well, she did, taking away their excuse. And so she starts off with Lord, son of David and then as she dialogues, it's Lord, it's Lord, it's this term that recognized his superior status in society. It's a term of respect. She's desperate. The tone is not casual.
Mark makes it sound a little casual. Matthew turns up the heat a little bit in his presentation of the story, but she is very desperate at this point and that's why she keeps asking him and it says here in verse 26 to cast the demon out of her daughter. In the New Testament, an unclean spirit, a demon or demon possession, they're used interchangeably.
They're the same. We believe they're elements of the fallen angels, the third of the angels that Satan swayed to go with him. The Bible doesn't give us too much detail about them, just enough on a need to know kind of basis. These evil spirits, and they are spirits, they're disembodied until they enter someone, they hate us all. And the Bible teaches that, especially in the New Testament.
Acts chapter 5, also a multitude gathered from the surrounding cities to Jerusalem, bringing sick people to those who were tormented by unclean spirits and they were healed. And that's what those unclean spirits do, they torment us. And these evil spiritual forces and influences are very real and often they are difficult to discern.
Not all the time, sometimes very easy. Because the flesh can do wicked things without any help from the devil. For example, in the flesh a man can kill, but in the flesh alone a man will not cannibalize what he has killed. That requires satanic activity.
And we've seen this at work in the world. I mean, we constantly point back to the Second World War, the demonic activity in not only Nazi Germany, but imperial Japan. I mean, the chopping off of heads of the Chinese and then putting them in cages like trophies, that's demonic.
It's not war, it's wickedness. Unclean spirits, they take the flesh to more extreme levels of irreverence directly aimed, since Christ on his cross and his resurrection, directly aimed at him. Now, those in the abortion business, you can't tell me they don't have an unclean spirit.
I mean, the things, how can, I don't care how oblivious they may be, this is more than just carnal activity. This is something that goes to another level, child abuses, serial killers, others more noticeably unclean spiritually and some not so obvious. Paul says this to let us know that there are spiritual forces hard at work against us, 1 Corinthians 10. He says, rather the things which Gentiles sacrifice is sacrificed to demons and not to God. And I do not want you to have fellowship with demons, because it's possible. It is possible to be in cahoots with demons and not even know it. Now, the Christian has nothing to worry about this. The body is a temple, it houses the Holy Spirit.
Greater is he who is in you than he is in the world. We're not susceptible to this, as long as we are in Christ, we are protected by Christ. But the world, which scoffs and therefore mishandles the subject entirely, it defies explanation to spiritual war from a human standpoint. God has to reveal these things to us. It defies explanation from science and psychology and philosophy and medicine.
They cannot handle this. This is a spiritual condition. You cannot take an x-ray of someone who has an unclean spirit and see it on the x-ray. There it is, look at that.
He's got the horns and everything. Not true. It is spirit. It is unseen.
It is invisible. And human power cannot defeat it. Some, in the book of Acts, we are told, tried to take on a man who was demon-possessed, Acts chapter 19. And so they tried to throw him out. They called him to come out in someone else's name. And so the demon responds through the man. The evil spirit answered and said, Jesus I know, and Paul I know, but who are you? And it continues, then the man in whom the evil spirit was, leaped on them, overpowered them, and prevailed against them so that they fled out of that house naked and wounded. Well, I don't remember in ministry, I know in life I have seen people who were demon-possessed, but in ministry I've not confronted them. But I have said to myself, if I do, and they get up in my face, I'm going to knock all their teeth out.
I mean, I'm not going to pull up with it. Well, maybe you've got a different approach, but I'm going in with guns. Anyway, the fallen angels that likely these characters come from, they followed Satan in their rebellion against God Almighty after having seen him on the throne, lived in heaven, what we call heaven, and their condition is irrevocable. They are unredeemable. Satan, the Antichrist, the beast, the unclean spirits, the fallen angels, Apollyon, all those characters are doomed. They are not going to get saved. There's a lake of fire for them, and there in Matthew 25, 41, God even tells us it was prepared for them, but the loss will go there too.
And their number one deception is about a relationship, a right relationship with God through Jesus Christ. 1 Timothy 4, Now the Spirit, that is the Holy Spirit, expressly says that in latter times some will depart from the faith, giving heed to deceiving spirits and doctrines of demons. How do these demons teach their doctrine?
Through people. So we come away from such a verse or section as this inscription, we say, yep, that is a reminder of God that we are in spiritual war. And human beings, as we read in chapter 5, one human being can house more demons than 2,000 pigs. God is saying this is serious, and I have not given you the spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind and a good right hook.
Unless you maybe use pepper spray or something, I don't know. Anyway, they need humans to host Matthew chapter 12. This speaks of a demon that is cast out of someone. Then he says, I will return to my house, that is the person that hosted him, from which I came and when he comes he finds it empty, swept, and put in order. So there you have a man that was demon possessed, then he is dispossessed. And he is sort of in his right mind, he's organized in his thinking, but he is empty. There is no Lord there to protect him.
And so he is refilled, seven times worse because that particular demon brings seven more with him. And you say, listen, this is all sci-fi. No, it's not, it's spiritual. And the Bible doesn't hide it from us. It tells us right out. And if you don't believe it, then you have a lot of explaining to do about human behavior because there are things that humans can do that are outside human thought.
Somebody is manipulating the machine. Paul said it this way, we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but principalities, power, spiritual wickedness in high places. And on the scripture goes and revealing to us. One, I think, reason why we don't get a lot about them is because we would be, you know, oh, the devil made me do it. And God is saying, no, your sin made you do it.
This one is on you. And even if the devil did, you've opened yourself up to him. So the warnings in scripture forbidding God's people from tampering with witchcraft and astrology and necromancy and, you know, contacting the dead, having a seance, that's messing with Satan. And we are not to do, there's no other spiritual power we're interested in contacting except the Holy Spirit, God the Father, God the Son, God the Spirit.
And that's it. We don't talk to angels. We don't talk to loved ones that have died and gone. We don't pray to Mary. We don't do that stuff. It is forbidden.
And it comes with a high consequence if it can, because it opens the door to demonic activity. Thanks for tuning in to Cross Reference Radio for this study in the Book of Mark. Cross Reference Radio is the teaching ministry of Pastor Rick Gaston of Calvary Chapel Mechanicsville in Virginia. To learn more information about this ministry, visit our website, crossreferenceradio.com. Once you're there, you'll find additional teachings from Pastor Rick. We encourage you to subscribe to our podcast. When you subscribe, you'll be notified of each new edition of Cross Reference Radio. You can search for Cross Reference Radio on your favorite podcast app. That's all we have time for today, but we hope you'll join us next time as Pastor Rick continues to teach through the Book of Mark, right here on Cross Reference Radio.
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