I fancy myself a really good driver.
If you ever have the privilege of driving with me, I will show you several amazing
things about how you should drive.
But have you ever had the experience where you think you know something
and you would die to be like, this is the way it's supposed to be.
This is the way it is.
This only to be shown that you are actually wrong about the thing
that you were so confident about.
Talking about things that I never saw coming.
So here's my dilemma.
All right here's the situation.
I'm at a U-turn, and I know some of you guys don't drive yet.
You're gonna get there soon enough.
I'm at a U-turn.
There's a flashing yellow light in front of me, which means I can make
the U-turn, but I have to wait.
I have to yield to the oncoming traffic.
But what happens if there's a person who's making a right turn
into the flow of traffic, right where you're making the U-turn?
Who has the right of way?
Right turn.
Seems like all of you know the correct answer to this.
I would have argued to my death saying that the U-turn person
should go the U-turn person that they're in the flow of traffic.
If that right turn person goes and they get in my way, that's on them.
I found out after arguing with the driver on the road that wasn't like
a, weren't fighting or nothing.
We exchanged a few gunshots, but besides that, it was pretty normal conversation.
I was making a U-turn and the person in the car was like, what are you doing?
You could see their face.
They were mad at me and I'm like, I'm doing the right thing, homie.
So I got in front of them and I brake checked them
with the compass sticker on my car.
Anyway, I went home that day and I gotta figure this out.
I'm like 99.9%
sure that the U-turn person is supposed to go, but I found out that's not true.
The U-turn has to yield the right of way to the guy making the right
turn into the flow of traffic.
Sir, there's certain things that you can get wrong and it's not a big deal.
This is, this is a big deal if you get in an accident, not a massive deal,
but there are things that you can get wrong about God and the Bible and
following Christ that if you get them wrong, it's more than just an accident.
It's really a disaster.
Tonight we're gonna talk about what you should not get wrong about
the way that Jesus saves, about the way that you are a Christian.
Tonight, I want to be sure that you understand what Matthew 15 is
gonna tell us is that Jesus saves everyone who trusts in him, not just
those people who do the right thing.
In fact, Jesus doesn't say people who think that they're doing the right thing.
Jesus doesn't say people who trust in their works.
Jesus saves people who believe and trust in Him and Him alone.
We're gonna jump into Matthew chapter 15.
We've got a lot of ground to cover, and I plan on being fairly short tonight.
Normally I preach 55 minutes.
I'm probably gonna be closer to 53 minutes tonight, so it's
gonna be a really short night.
Alright, let's jump into where we're at.
Let me first orient you as you guys open up your Bibles at Matthew chapter 15.
Let me show you where we are in the world.
Israel is a real place.
Jesus is a real man.
He lives in a real city with real people.
And you'll notice as we enter into this text here we're still back in Israel.
In fact, as we zoom in, this is a modern map.
There we go.
I zoomed in too far.
This is a modern map of this of this the state of Israel.
So you see, you have Amman here, you have Israel down there, you've got Jerusalem.
There are some cities that has still exist today that existed thousands of years ago.
So this is really cool.
Today we're looking here a little up north.
Here we go.
I can't see from over here.
All right.
There's Jericho, the Jerusalem.
Now.
Okay, here we go.
Top of that, top of the screen here, you'll see the Sea of Galilee.
The sea of Tiberius.
That's where Jesus is spending most of his time.
It's still there today.
If you go to Israel, you can still see the places where Jesus taught
and interacted with a lot of people.
It's really actually quite cool.
So this is the modern map.
Here's the old school map minus a lot of the things that we have today.
So this is not Google Maps anymore.
This is what it looks like today.
You'll see the Sea of Galilee right here now.
And you have Tiberius.
You have Razin, you have Beeta.
You have this place called The Desolate Place.
We'll talk about that in just a few moments here.
You've got Cana of Galilee, of Nazareth down here.
This section over here is often called the Decapolis.
It's a confederation of 10 cities.
They're a group of cities that say, Hey, let's work together to do the same thing.
And way up here is Caesarea Philippi.
That's gonna become important in a minute.
And way over here to my left is Tire and Sidon.
That's gonna be important too, 'cause that's not Jewish territory.
That's where the Gentiles live.
Now, Jesus is somewhere in this region right here, and I'm not
entirely sure where he is, but when we left, we last left off Jesus
inert, which is about right here.
So we're probably in this region here right now in this particular text.
And if you zoom in just a little further, here's again here.
Here's what it looks like today.
All this place is populated.
If you wanna fly to Israel, you could see all the cool places that Jesus spent time.
We have a reasonable degree of confidence of where he was and what he was doing.
Again, here's the zoom in of what it looked like in the past.
Okay.
With that said, Matthew chapter 15, we're gonna look at what
Jesus says as he communicates.
Now in response to this group of people that come to pick a fight with him, the
scribes and the Pharisees enter the scene.
They're sent from Jerusalem to Jesus.
Their official delegation of people.
They're coming to pick a fight with Jesus, and here's what they say.
Essentially, look, your disciples are not eating their food with washed hands.
Now when your mom and dad say, Hey, wash your hands before you have dinner,
they're not talking about ceremony.
They're talking about cleanliness.
They don't want you to eat food with germs in their hands.
These guys are saying you're breaking the tradition of the elders.
That is the oral tradition saying every time you eat a meal, you're
supposed to wash your hands so that you could be ceremonially pure,
ceremonially clean ceremonially, so they could be pure ritually.
No.
So that's what's happening here.
They say, Jesus, why do you let your disciples do this?
And Jesus says, whoa, check yourself.
Because the real problem is not that my disciples don't wash their hands.
The problem is that you are breaking God's law in order to honor your traditions.
And he talks about one in particular.
He says, look, you guys say that it's okay to dishonor your mother and your father
by not providing for them financially.
If you say about your money, my money is dedicated to God, it would be like this.
Let's say your parents say, look, you guys, you got a job now.
You're working at the Whataburger, you're making two 50 an hour.
You're loaded with cash.
This coming Tuesday.
We want you to pay for dinner.
We want you to buy dinner for the whole family.
And so you say, oh man, mom and dad, sorry I would do that.
But I've actually dedicated all of my money to God going forward.
And they might say that's really cool.
What do you mean by that?
What I mean is that you can't touch my money.
You can.
You can look at my bank account, but you can't actually do anything with it.
And what the Pharisees and the scribes are doing is saying, look, my money belongs to
God, even though I haven't given it to God and not planning on giving it to God, even
in my lifetime, it still belongs to God, so you can't be supported by my money.
This was a big deal.
And so Jesus said, look, you're breaking the law of God in
order to honor your tradition.
And then Jesus calls them in.
In verse seven, I have verse 30, verse seven.
Jesus says something really.
Actually lemme go back here in verse seven, Jesus says about them,
look, you guys are hypocrites.
He says, you hypocrites, you guys are fakes and phonies.
You have the outward appearance of looking really righteous and really holy.
You look like you're the right people.
He says, but in actuality, the Bible says this about you.
You guys are actually liars and hypocrites and he says this,
people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.
In vain do they worship me.
Teaching as doctrines, the commandments of men.
There's a kind of religion that someone can have where
they say all the right things.
They do all the right things, they go to the right church, they have the right
Bible, they have the right study Bible.
They listen to the right teachers, they podcast the right sermons.
They say all the right things, but Jesus says there's a kind of person
who might say the right things and yet still have a very wrong life because
of what's happening on the inside.
In fact.
He says, what actually makes someone unclean and impure
before God is not what they eat.
It's not whether you eat with wash hands or unwashed hands.
He says, what really matters is the heart.
He says, it's not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person,
but what comes outta the mouth?
What you say that defiles you.
It's what you say that makes you unclean.
Then the disciples are like, Hey Jesus, we just want you to know what you're saying.
Really offensive to the Pharisees and the scribes.
Jesus is really you.
You gotta know that you're being really offensive.
When you're saying these things and he says, you know what,
they can dig their own grave.
If they're gonna have an issue with this, let them have the issue.
He says, because every plant that my father has not planted is gonna
be uprooted, which is to say, those guys are on the way to judgment.
Even though they look like they have their lives in order, their lives are in danger.
He goes on to say, do you not see that?
Whatever goes into the mouth, passes into the stomach and is expelled?
Jesus is saying, when you eat the food, you drop it in the toilet afterward.
That's it.
You, the food doesn't make you any better with God or any worse with God.
He says What actually matters though is what comes outta the mouth,
which perceives from the heart.
This is what defiles a person for.
Out of the hearts come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality,
theft, false witness and slander.
Catch what Jesus is saying here.
What's really important to see.
He says that what your heart is doing on the inside is what will produce
the words that you say on the outside.
Have you ever said to somebody, oh, I didn't mean what I said.
You said something mean to them, and you said, oh, I, I didn't mean what I said.
Jesus is saying, no, you did though.
You did, because what comes out of your heart at, or what comes outta
your mouth is coming from your heart.
That is, it comes from who you are.
And if what you say scares you, you said something to your mom like, oh, you
I remember when I was in high school.
I literally meant it to my mom.
We had this terrible fight and I said, I hate you.
I remember that.
I remember.
'cause it's such a powerful word, right?
You don't say that to people unless you really mean it.
And even then, it's probably not a good thing.
I said it to my mom and I realized, man, that's a powerful word.
But I was looking for any word I could to stab her in the heart the
way I felt like she stabbed me.
Jesus says that when you hate, when you have evil thoughts or murderous
thoughts or adulterous thoughts or any kind of thoughts that are evil, they're
not coming from out there somewhere.
They're coming from within you.
Your heart is the problem.
And so Jesus is saying that their issue is not whether you have
clean hands or not clean hands.
The issue is whether you have a clean heart.
These are what defile a person, but to eat with unwashed hands doesn't defile anyone.
Jesus is making a big distinction here.
There's a difference between a good kid and God's kid.
There's a difference between a church kid and Christ's kid.
There's a difference between a kid who does all the right things
versus a kid who, because he loves Jesus does all the right things.
There's a kid who does all the right things on the outside, dresses the
right way, she says the right things.
Again, she prays the right prayers, but doesn't have her heart dedicated to God.
Here's the big mistake against Jesus, saves everyone who trusts in
him, not those who obey the rules.
Number one, you ought to be sure that you trust in Jesus not in rules.
Don't put your trust in having the right clothes or the right
words or the right attire.
Having the right church that you go to, you can have all the right things.
You can even have the right parents.
You have great parents who train you well.
They teach you the right things.
You can have parents who, who go out of their way to send
you to the right schools.
You get catechized with the right words, and you have in
your mind all the advantages.
The Jewish people once came to Jesus and said, Jesus, we
have Abraham as our father.
We're great.
We're good with you, aren't we?
And Jesus says, try again.
That's the wrong answer.
Your pedigree, your family affiliation does not make you right with God.
Even if your family's the Godliest family that goes to the church.
I want you to be sure that you trust in Jesus and not in obeying the rules.
Obeying the rules is good.
You should obey the rules.
It's better than disobeying the rules, that's for sure.
But if you're obeying the rules and you think that doing the right thing
makes you right with God, you have to think again, this is the critical error
that most youth group students make.
They think I must be right with God because when I'm
in worship, I lift my hands.
I even feel the emotions sometimes.
We're singing some of those great songs.
The worship pastor picks some of the best worship music I've
ever heard, and it's so moving.
Sometimes I just get really emotional.
That must mean that I'm a Christian, right?
Jesus would say no.
Doesn't mean that you're a Christian.
Having the right emotions doesn't mean that you're a Christian.
Having the right church doesn't mean that you're a Christian.
Having the right Bible, again, if you have a nice ESV Bible, you might feel
like, man, I feel pretty good about that.
I'm not one of those weird people with an LSB or A CSB or an NIV.
No, I got the right Bible.
I got an ESV and I got an ESV John MacArthur study Bible.
Be sure that you're not trusting in anything.
Besides Jesus,
one of my favorite Christmas presents that he ever got was wrapped in a
big box, something like this, and it sat there for the whole month
of December and I just could not wait to figure out what was inside.
My family has this weird tradition where on Christmas Eve we stay up all the way up
to midnight and then my mom would let us all open one present, and so we did that.
It was Christmas Eve.
The heater was on.
We were drinking some or chatta and some chocolate milk, I think.
I forget what it was.
It was just one of those really sweet, like the things that you imagine
in your memory, what Christmas is.
That's what it felt like.
And so Christmas Eve comes, it turns to midnight.
It's now technically Christmas day.
And so she's like, all right, you guys can open one present.
So I go for the big one.
I open it up, and at first I'm surprised like this.
What am I looking at?
As I start taking pieces out of the box, I realize, oh man, this is a boom box.
It's a stereo system.
You guys don't do that today, I don't think.
But this thing played CDs and cassette tapes, and it connected to the radio.
It was so cool.
And on top of that, I had this Michael Jackson cd.
It was my introduction to Michael Jackson.
It was the best.
It was such a cool gift.
I loved it.
Now imagine it's Christmas to this year.
2025 is Christmas, which is not too far away.
You have a gift just like this wrapped under the tree.
It has your name on it, and it says to my beloved daughter or son to my fluffy kins.
'cause that's what your parents call you.
They call you fluffy kins, and they and you see it there.
And then comes Christmas day and they're like, all right, fluffy kins.
You can now open this amazing present we got for you.
And so Carson begins to unwrap it.
Carson Fluffy kins begins to unwrap it only to find out that what's inside.
Is absolutely nothing.
What a terrible gift, right?
Nothing.
What a,
This is what Christianity is like for someone who's only doing
the good things on the outside.
A great looking rapper, a great presentation, but nothing on the inside.
There's no changed heart.
There's no changed life.
It's just someone who's just going through the motions.
The difference here is self-righteousness, saying that I can do enough good deeds.
I can have the right pedigree versus saying I trust in Christ's righteousness.
Matthew 15 shows us that the Pharisees were diluted thinking
I could be good enough if the bar to go to heaven is this high.
I could do it.
They thought they were righteous enough in their own works to do
what was right, but Jesus wants you to know that your righteousness
is never gonna be good enough.
You are not good enough.
Contrary to most of the things that you're hearing today, you're
not sufficient in yourself.
You don't have, you don't have anything to offer.
God.
This is why the gospel is so sweet, because Jesus says, even
though you don't have anything to offer, God, I can give you all
that you need to be right with God.
I can forgive all of your sin, and I can give you 100% of the
righteousness that you need with one second of decision on your part.
You submit yourself to Christ, trusting in him fully and completely,
and suddenly everything changes.
So don't get it twisted.
Bible reading is good, but don't trust in your Bible reading.
Praying is good, but don't put your trust in the act of praying.
Going to church is awesome, but don't put your trust in church attendance.
Don't put your trust in the fact that you come to True North on Wednesday nights.
These are all good things, but these are much like a protein bar.
Just like a protein bar.
This is a terrible illustration, but I'm gonna use it anyway.
Okay, here we go.
Let's say you are starving and you come to me like, pastor Rod, I'm just starving.
Will you please feed me something?
And I go into my bag and I always have, I always have something in there.
I have a protein bar, and so I say, oh, here's a pre a pure protein bar for you.
And so I give you the protein bar and you carefully unwrap it and
then you begin to eat the wrapper.
I say no.
No.
You're supposed to eat the bar.
No, but I really wanted the wrapper though, so please just
let me be, I'm speaking my truth.
I was eating my, and you start eating the wrapper and I'm concerned about you.
'cause now all those microplastics are in your body and I just
read a report about that.
You're probably gonna get brain cancer.
Obviously the wrapper's not the point.
The wrapper is important.
Keeps the food fresh, protects the food, shows you what's inside and how many
macros and there are, and all that stuff.
But the wrapper's not the point.
The wrapper leads you to the stuff on the inside.
That's the idea.
It tells you what's inside.
It helps you to get to the food that's inside.
So that's what that's what Bible reading and prayer and church attendance is like.
It leads you to what's truly nourishing on the inside.
All of those things are like the wrapper.
They're important, they're necessary, but if you're doing them as an end
in themselves, you're totally mi you're totally missing the point.
The wrapper is meant to say, eat what's inside Bible Reading,
prayer, church attendance is meant to say, feast on Jesus.
He's the sustenance that you need.
He's the one that you should trust.
Not in the church attendance, not in the things that you do, but trusting in Jesus.
But don't put your trust in the rapper.
Let the, let all these things point you to Jesus himself.
That's the idea there.
Scripture says things like this, when you become a Christian,
Jesus becomes your righteousness.
That is your right.
Standing before God doesn't wax and wane, it doesn't grow or shrink based on whether
you're having a good day or a bad day.
Not ultimately.
When you die and stand before God, you're gonna, you're not gonna say, look.
God.
Here's what I did.
I went to Wednesday night youth ministry.
I went to Sunday morning, heard pastor PJ preach.
I served, I helped.
None.
None of us are gonna say that.
What we're gonna say is Jesus Christ is my righteousness.
I trust him and him alone
because of him.
You are in Christ Jesus who became our righteousness, young person.
This is so critical.
It's so simple, but so critical.
You're trusting in anything else in this life besides Jesus for your
salvation, you will go to hell for that trust because it's a false trust.
If you're trusting in anything else in the world besides Jesus for your
salvation, your trust is misplaced and it's ultimately going to destroy you.
Heavy place to start, but a very necessary one.
This is why Jesus said, look, you guys got it all wrong.
You think that your traditions make you right with God.
They don't.
What does make you right with God is a new heart that Jesus alone can give you.
So Jesus now takes us into this next section here where he interacts with
this gal that is so interesting.
It actually looks like Jesus is mean.
At first.
Jesus is gonna move northward again to the region of tire and
seiden far up here to the left.
So this is.
This is the Sea of Galilee down here.
Jesus moves all the way up to this region over here and he is gonna
meet a woman, and his interaction with her is gonna challenge the
way that you understand Jesus.
But I need you to see something really important because the way
he interacts with her, there's more than what meets the eye.
Jesus went away from there and withdrew to the district of Tyra inside.
And what I just pointed out to you, behold they canon, that woman came from
that region and came out and was crying.
Have mercy on me.
Oh Lord, son of David.
Okay.
Canaanite woman.
Canaanite is a bad word.
It means she's an outsider.
She's not Jewish.
She's one of the people that Israel was told to destroy when Israel went
to take their land that God gave them.
And so this Canaanite woman comes to Jesus, and she doesn't just know
him as a teacher, she says, oh Lord.
Which is a, it could be a respectful way of saying sir, or it could be Lord.
I think she's saying Lord as in Lord Jesus because of how she calls him.
Son of David.
Think for a second.
What does the term Son of David mean?
It means that she recognizes that he's Messianic, that he's the Messiah,
son of David, means the offspring of David who would build the shore house.
So she calls him son of David.
She says, my daughter is severely oppressed by a demon.
But Jesus, look at this, did not answer her.
He didn't say a word to her.
He just gave her the cold shoulder.
This woman though, is undeterred.
His disciples came and begged him saying.
Jesus send her away for she is crying out after us.
In other words, this woman's not going away.
She's advocating for her daughter.
She's begging Jesus, son of David to do something.
And then he answered to the disciples, look, guys, I can't
do what you're asking me to do.
It seems like the disciples are saying just heal her and send her away.
She's becoming super annoying.
Jesus says, I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.
Remember, she's a Canaanite girl.
She's actually Phoenician.
She's just from that region.
Not technically a Canaanite, but she's an outsider.
And Jesus says that I'm not sent to the outsider.
Not yet.
I'm sent to Israel.
But she came and knelt before him.
Now she's kneeling in front of him and she says, Lord, help me.
She's now pleading with Jesus on her knees.
And then Jesus says something shocking.
He says, it's not right.
It's not right for me to take the children's bread that is Israel's
bread and throw it to the dogs.
That's kinda harsh, Jesus.
Still, the woman is undeterred.
She said, yes, Lord.
Yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master's table.
Jesus answered, oh woman, great is your faith.
This is one of the few people in the gospels that Jesus
says, your faith is awesome.
The disciples had little faith.
Oh, you of little faith.
He said to them and to many of the crowds, but to her, she says, oh woman, great.
Is your faith, be it as be it done for you as you desire.
And her daughter was healed instantly.
This woman who pleads before Jesus is initially rejected
by Jesus at least so it seems.
But instead of Jesus actually sending her away, he invites her closer to himself
and ultimately answers her prayer request.
You should expect Jesus to do the same to you if you have real faith.
If you have a real faith in Jesus, you should expect point number two for
Jesus to put your faith to the test.
He won't just let your faith stay where it is.
Jesus is gonna call you to a deeper and stronger and more robust faith.
And here's what that's gonna mean for you short term.
If Jesus saves those who trust in him and not on the rules, he's
gonna call you closer to himself by causing you to trust him more.
Your faith does not have to be large for it to be effective.
Lewis talked about that right?
The plane situation, right?
If you're a scared person in the plane, you're still gonna get to the destination.
It's not the quality of your faith that makes or breaks you,
it's where the faith is placed.
You need to expect Jesus to test your faith, which means Jesus is
gonna put obstacles in your life.
He's gonna challenge you because he wants you to trust him.
Speaking of challenges.
One of my favorite pastimes, I don't have many hobbies, but I guess I would
call this one kind of a hobby, is I love watching Food Challenge videos.
Eric The Electric is one of my favorites.
Matt Stoney always a character.
I like him too.
Randy Santel, one of my favorites as well.
He recently proposed to Catina Katina, who eats carbs.
I forget her name, the name of her channel.
She's another competitive eater.
Anyway, Randy Sanel.
I recently found out I.
What goes into a food challenge that is these guys have massive
stomachs, but they don't just have that, they actually train for that.
So I watched a video about how you train to be a competitive eater, and
he said you, you prepare at least the week ahead, but especially the 24 hours
before you have the challenge, he eats at least a pound to a, to two pounds
more the night before for what he's going to eat the day of the challenge.
That means if his challenge is eight pounds, he's trying to eat 10 pounds
of food before the day before to make sure that his stomach is stretched
out large enough, excuse me, so that he can put more food down.
And of course the training is uncomfortable.
You might think man, doesn't he feel like he's gonna throw up?
And yes they learn, they train to, to turn off that signal
for their stomach to throw up.
'cause if you throw up, you're disqualified.
So he trains to eat tons of food.
As you might imagine, this guy, he gave like a ton of weight.
But the training is uncomfortable and painful, but it's not pointless.
So just like food competitors stretch their stomachs with more than they
think that they need, Jesus will often stretch our faith through trials that
we think are bigger than we can handle, and the fact that usually is the case,
Jesus doesn't give you easy believism.
He's not just giving you a bar that you could just walk over.
Jesus is giving you challenges that are gonna, like Jesus, this is too much.
I can't handle this.
I can't eat all this food.
Jesus, I can't do this.
And Jesus is saying, you're right.
You can't.
But if you rely on me, if you trusted me, you can't.
You could do it by faith in me.
And so one of the things that you need to know is that Jesus is gonna test you.
It's gonna happen.
If you have real faith.
You need to remember that the tests are coming.
So recognize that Jesus is in control.
You should trust his leadership.
If Jesus puts a challenge in front of you and you say, Jesus, I can't do it.
He's saying, I know you can't by yourself, but trust me and I'll take you through it.
The Canaanite woman the cyro Venetian woman came to Jesus because she
knew he could handle her problems.
She knew who he was.
She knew what he was about, so she said, I'm gonna take my issues to Jesus.
You ought to do that too.
You need to respond to the challenges that Jesus takes to do
by pursuing him through prayer.
Remember, prayer is not a means in and of itself.
It's not the rapper that you're going for.
Prayer is the rapper that leads you to Jesus.
It leads you to say, Jesus, I depend upon you.
Prayer is the means by which you connect with the God who made you.
Tests are coming.
Your teachers tell you this at the beginning of your semesters, right?
Hey, we're gonna have tests here, and here.
You need to be ready for them.
Some of you're doing star testing this week.
Tests are coming.
You know that they're there.
And so the Bible is giving you a heads up.
This is how he treats his people.
Jesus is a good leader.
He's also a good fa.
He is not the father.
The father's a good father, and any father cares about you is going to
willingly put you in painful situations.
To grow you, not to heart, to hurt you, and the way that he
grows you is through your faith.
Take a lesson from the Canaanite woman and learn to put your
trust in Jesus going to him.
What made her so tenacious?
This Canaanite woman who didn't, she didn't have the internet,
didn't have Twitter, didn't have Facebook, didn't have any way of
following and no, no YouTube channel.
She knew something about him that I wonder if some of you guys really know
and it's that Jesus actually cares.
Jesus isn't just testing us.
He's providing for us and that's what this last section's about
Jesus is providing for our needs.
Take a look here.
He is gonna come back.
Now I think Jesus is probably up here in the norther northern region of
the Sea Galilee in the Bea region.
I'm not sure if you could see that, but Jesus is probably there.
He's in a largely gentile territory.
So what we're looking at is probably a, a more Gentiles.
Here's what happens.
Jesus went on from there and walked beside the Sea of Galilee and he went
up on the mountain and he sat down there and great crowds came to him.
Bringing with them the lame, the blind, the crippled, the mute, and many others.
And they put him at his feet and he healed them so that the crowd wondered,
they were in awe of Jesus' healing power.
And when they saw the mute speaking, the crippled, healthy, the lame,
walking in the blind, seeing they glorified the God of Israel.
This doesn't guarantee that this is a Gentile audience, but
it does give at least the hint that's what's happening here.
In fact, if we're gonna take Mark's account.
He's in the region of the De Capitalis.
That's right.
I forgot to mention that.
He's in the region of the de Capitalis, which would make this a largely,
if not completely gentile audience.
And then what you have here is a miracle that Lewis preached on just last week.
We're seeing it again, but in a different audience.
Jesus calls his disciples to him and said, look, I have compassion on the crowd.
And the word for compassion is something that Jesus felt in his gut.
Have you ever seen a person or maybe an animal suffering and you
feel something in your gut that just says, man I care about that.
It feels like there's something in your guts that makes you feel bad
or feel some something for somebody.
Jesus feels compassion for people in his gut.
This is not just a oh, I feel bad about that.
He feels in his gut, the compassion for the crowd, and he says,
they've been with me now three days and they have nothing to eat.
That's a problem.
There is no seven 11.
You can't go grab, a big cup, a big slurp, a big whatever they're called.
You can't go to the qt.
You can't go to the local Walmart and pick up some talkies.
You're in trouble if you have no food and you're in a desolate place.
This is actually kinda reckless of the people.
They're with Jesus and they have nothing to eat.
What are they doing?
This shows you how powerful Jesus' ministry was because people were willing
to say, look, we don't have any food, but this is more important for us.
I'd that'd preach to you guys.
Jesus is more important than your bellies most of the time.
So he says, look, I don't wanna send them away unless they faint on the way back.
That's how little food they have.
They're going on empty.
The disciples said to him Jesus where do you want us to get enough
bread in this desolate place?
Now you're thinking wait, didn't he just multiply the fish and the loaves?
How do they not know?
There's a lot of things that could be happening here, but probably
what's going on is that they're saying, Jesus, these are gentiles.
Do you really are you gonna multiply bread for them too?
That I, I, we get it for the Israelites, but for these guys too
we don't think that's gonna happen.
So what do you propose that we do?
Jesus.
Jesus said to them, how many loaves he got?
Seven and a few small fish.
And so then he did the same thing that he did with the 5,000.
He distributes the fish and the loaves.
And here's the cool thing, verse 37.
All those people ate and here's words that really stood out to me.
They were satisfied.
They feasted on bread and their bellies were full.
Jesus was not a stingy giver.
He wasn't just Hey guys, we're having Chick-fil-A tonight.
You only get one sandwich per person.
Jesus is the Chick-fil-A person that's Hey, you can have as
many sandwiches as you want.
You'll be satisfied.
You want five sandwiches?
All of 'em spicy, fantastic.
Jesus is not stingy.
He gives and he gives until their hearts are fully satisfied.
Their bellies actually.
So they took up seven baskets full of broken pieces.
Those who ate were 4,000 men besides women and children, which means
this could have been closer to about 10,000 people all accounted for.
Jesus does his great miracle.
Here's the point I think that you ought to take home when you see things like this.
I want you to recognize that even though Jesus is long gone from earth,
he's not long gone from heaven.
He's still around.
And here's the thing, you might not believe this, but
Jesus actually cares about you.
He cares about Israelites, he cares about Gentiles, which is
most of us in this room here.
Jesus cares about you.
You ought to point number three, never doubt Jesus genuine care for you.
Jesus will save those who trust in him, and one of the things that prevent
people from trusting in Him is that they don't think that he really cares.
You might think Jesus is just a religious vigor who stands over me and promises
to judge me if I don't do what he says.
That's partially true, but that's not all of it.
Jesus genuinely cares for you.
The reason that you should become a Christian and stay a Christian for the
rest of your life is because you're not gonna find anybody else who will
care for you the way that Jesus does.
And all you have, sorry about that.
Excuse me.
All you have to do is look at your life to this point and look
at how God has provided for you.
Look at how Jesus has taken care of your needs, practically, physically,
emotionally Jesus has been there for you.
I want you to imagine that you have a dog.
If you do have one, you're blessed.
Imagine it's that dog and you, and your dog is actually really sick,
and you finally take your dog to the vet and the vet tells you that
your dog needs several painful shots to bring about the healing process.
And so there's your dog.
He's sick, he's unhappy.
And so the vet says here the way that this works, I'm gonna need you to
hold your dog close to your chest.
Not let him move.
And I'm gonna stick these really big needles in his butt to heal him.
And there's gonna be several.
And so the doctor says, can you do this?
And you say, I think so.
What choice do I have?
I need to do this in order to save my puppy, my dog.
And he says, yes.
It's exactly the way you need to do it.
So you're holding your dog.
And then he is jamming these bigs honking needles in his, in your dog's butt.
And he is sticking the good stuff inside of him.
Your dog.
If the dog could think, what's your dog thinking?
When you're holding him down and this guy's inflicting pain on his rear
end, what's your dog thinking like?
You hate me.
You no longer love me.
You're the worst master I've ever had.
I'm disowning you effective immediately.
Please take me to the pound.
We're no longer friends.
Your dog would honestly think you're the problem, right?
You're the issue.
If your dog could talk, you could reason with your dog.
You'd say, look fluffy kins, Patrick, look, I'm doing this because I love you.
I'm taking care of you.
And in fact, if your dog could understand, you would say, fluffy kins, we've
cared for you every day of your life.
Fresh food, fresh water, every day.
I picked up your poop in the backyard.
I've done everything for you.
Fluffy, kins, everything.
Why would we stop now?
Tru, trust us.
We're trying to help you.
That's what you would tell your puppy who has to go to the vet
and get the shots in the rear end.
This is often.
How we interact with God.
We sometimes think because God's sending us through painful situations, or life
is hard, there's another school shooting, or my friend who I knew from this
other school got stabbed in the chest, or other issues that we go through.
We think, oh, maybe God doesn't care.
Maybe God is forgotten about me or something like that.
And the reality is, no, God is doing what God needs to do in order
to strengthen you and to deepen your faith and your trust in him.
That's his mo.
You ought to never doubt.
Jesus genuine care for you, and all you have to do is just
look backward at your life.
Look at in, in order to make to go forward.
Look backward.
Look at the way that Jesus has taken care of you in the past.
Now, look at the way that he's cared for you.
Look at the way that he's answered prayers.
Look at the way that he's cared for your family.
Look at the way that he's given you guys food every night.
You never lack a meal most of the time, right?
You have shoes on your feet, you have clothes on your body.
What you know about Jesus ought to carry you through when you're
not sure what to feel about him.
There are gonna be seasons where you feel distant from God and you're
not sure that you can trust Jesus because your heart doesn't feel it.
Trust what you know, not what you feel.
Lastly, you ought to feed on what truly satisfies.
Jesus gave this gentile crowd bread that satisfied their bellies.
Jesus is the living bread that promises when you feast on Jesus, he will satisfy
your soul in ways that nothing else can, and that really is the point.
Jesus is the bread of life.
Whoever comes to me, he says, shall not hunger.
And whoever believes in me shall never thirst.
Jesus wants you to feast on him.
He wants you to trust him because Jesus will save everyone who trusts in him,
not those who trust in the rules, not those who only look at the outside.
The religious leaders in Matthew 15 were shocked at Jesus' Word.
They were offended is what the disciples said, because Jesus says, your rules,
your external tradition don't matter.
What does matter Is your relationship with God, the heart Jesus exposed.
The real reality is that their hearts were far from God.
They said all the right things.
They wore the right clothes.
They washed the right hands.
They did all the things that someone would expect of a religious person.
Please don't talk while I'm preaching.
Okay.
Please focus.
Okay.
Thank you.
So he rejects the religious authorities, but an outsider, a Canaanite woman
comes to him and she's accepted.
Only after she pursues him, Jesus gives her the stiff arm until
she pushes hard enough to say, that's exactly what I wanted.
Great is your faith.
Jesus says, everyone who trusts in him, the gentile crowd comes to him.
They trust him so much that they're willing to forego their food.
And Jesus answers swiftly by saying, I'm gonna give them
all the food that they need.
I'm gonna satisfy their bellies.
They're gonna be stuffed with good food.
All of this points to the fact that Jesus wants you to trust in him.
Not the rules, not the church.
I guess the true church, but all those things are, again, the wrapper.
They lead you to Jesus.
So tonight, I'm gonna encourage you to not let another night go by.
If you're unsure about where you are with Christ, tonight's
a good night to figure it out.
It's a really good night.
If you're unsure about what's happening in your heart with Christ, tonight's
a really good night to figure it out.
Don't let another night go by.
What do you gotta lose?
You have everything to gain and nothing to lose.
Tonight is a great night for you to figure some things out.
Jesus cares for you.
The fact that you're here is evidence that Jesus cares.
I hope you see that.
I hope you see what they can't see.
Let's pray.
God, please help us as we now go to our small groups.
Give us grace to spend good time thinking and praying and talking.
Help us to have some honest, real conversations.
Let other be transparency and vulnerability appropriately help us
to have great small groups where we walk away feeling great about our
interactions and deepened in our understanding about who you are.
We ask this in Jesus name, amen.