The Syrophoenician Woman, Part 3

Driving home: This passage gives us a vivid exhibition of the principles of prevailing intercessory prayer.

Affliction is likened to an 'ugly package' in which God wraps His most precious gifts, using the woman's daughter's demon possession as the occasion for her experience of grace.

of one of the major purposes of God in affliction. This woman is a monument of the fact that affliction coming to us in the providence of God is often God's ugly package in which He's wrapped, some of His most precious gifts. And it was the affliction of the demon possession of this woman's daughter that became the occasion for her sensing her need and the suitability of Christ to her need and became the very open door into this tremendous experience of His grace and of His power. And so we concluded our study last week by noting in the third place that the passage does indeed contain a glorio...

5:31 - 6:58 Read in full sermon

The point: Be an intercessor for your children, neighbors, nation, church, its leaders, and fellow members.

The essential elements of prevailing intercessory prayer are compared to the intertwined taproots of a tree, without which the tree's life cannot be sustained.

Well, as we examine the perspectives, the convictions, the words, and the actions of this Gentile woman, it becomes clear that her intercession on behalf of her daughter was marked by three tap roots in all. All motions and actings. I'm likening these to the roots of a tree. That without which the life of the tree cannot be sustained.

16:05 - 16:40 Read in full sermon

The point: Be an intercessor for your children, neighbors, nation, church, its leaders, and fellow members.

The woman's honest assessment of her daughter's demon possession is contrasted with playing 'head games' or using euphemisms, highlighting the need for realism in prayer.

Now, what was the woman's conviction concerning reality? Verse 26. Now, the woman was a Greek, a Syrophoenician, and she besought him that he would cast the demon out of her daughter. In fact, according to the parallel passage in Matthew 15, 22, she even confesses that the reality is that her daughter is not only demon-possessed in an ordinary sense, of that horrible reality, but she says, my daughter is severe head games on herself and speaking euphemisms. She doesn't come to Jesus from the scene of a severely demonized daughter and play a head game on herself and say, well, really, all she's...

18:39 - 19:47 Read in full sermon

The point: Test the present state of your heart by the vitality, scope, and tenacity of your intercessory prayers.

A self-centered prayer life is described as treating God like a 'heavenly bellboy' to run personal errands, contrasting it with the selfless agony of intercessory prayer.

A heart well my full with personal desires, personal hurts, personal ambition, personal sensitivities, self-importance, will never know the selfless agony of prevailing intercessory prayer. Perhaps there is no more accurate test of the present state of our hearts at any given point in our Christian experience than the vitality, scope, and tenacity of our intercessory prayers. You can be full of self and have an apparently flourishing prayer life of petition for your own needs in which God becomes your heavenly bellboyer. Enjoy to run your errands. But when you take your posture before him, not...

27:11 - 28:30 Read in full sermon

The point: Test the present state of your heart by the vitality, scope, and tenacity of your intercessory prayers.

A quote from C.S. Lewis illustrates that to love is to be vulnerable, and attempting to protect one's heart from love leads to selfishness and spiritual death, emphasizing the self-denial required for intercession.

C.S. Lewis, speaking of the vulnerability of a heart, that is determined to love others, wrote these very perceptive words, To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken.

28:30 - 28:57 Read in full sermon

The point: Come boldly to the throne of grace, especially when pleading for others distressed by the devil.

The intense focus of the woman and Jesus in the narrative is compared to a camera lens focusing on an object, blurring everything else into the background, to emphasize the directness of her prayer.

and in the entire passage, in reading it, meditating upon it, there's a sense in which everything fades into the blurry background, like a picture in which you have a larger, you've opened up the lens on your camera to focus on a given opportunity, on an object, and everything else is blurred. Everything else is blurred, but this woman and Jesus. There is a bold engagement of Jesus with reference to her need. And isn't that what we find in those examples of intercession to which we've been alluding?

37:01 - 37:38 Read in full sermon

Driving home: Difficulty in every brave heart only is resolution and grace is the soul for greater effort and where true faith is within certain limits indeed but yet it is really strengthened by trial.

A quote from William Taylor likens God's delays in answering prayer to 'drops of acid' that test whether prayers are 'genuine gold' or mingled with half-heartedness, explaining the purpose of persistence.

God is large and if the coffers of heaven are full why must we be persistent? One of the most perceptive answers to that question is embodied in the insights of William Taylor who commenting on this very incident writes the Lord's treatment of their prayer his delay and their request are drops of acid which prove whether or not their prayers are of genuine gold. Someone has a lump of metal looks like pure gold put a drop of acid on it. If there's any alloy in there the acid will consume it only the gold will remain.

45:17 - 46:00 Read in full sermon

The point: Pray for a deeper engagement with the needs of others, becoming an obsession akin to Paul's travail for the Galatians.

Paul's spiritual 'travail' for the Galatians is compared to a woman's birth pains, illustrating the intense, consuming nature of engaged intercessory prayer.

earnest prayers with God in my knees with my son in law yesterday I pleaded with God for this again Lord in this coming year take me deeper into the school of prevailing prayer Lord do what must be done to give my heart that engagement with the needs of others that will become a kind of obsession Paul described it this way with the Galatians my little children of whom I travel till Christ be formed in you I tell you when a woman's birth pains come on her only one thing matters getting in the labor room and pushing she's got to have that and Paul something has happened to me spiritually akin to...

64:40 - 66:10 Read in full sermon

The point: Pray for a deeper engagement with the needs of others, becoming an obsession akin to Paul's travail for the Galatians.

Pastor Martin shares a personal anecdote about his mother's persistent, travailing prayer for her eleven children, refusing to be content with mere professions until she saw genuine regeneration.

my dear mother who bore eleven children ten of us lived to adulthood and are all living and when they would see her concern for her children and her travail they'd say but Mrs. Martin just commit them to the Lord she said commit them to the Lord he's committed them to my care and there wasn't a one of them that I didn't bring forth with labor and travail into this world do I think they'll be brought forth into that eternal world with something less and she dared to take their cheap religion and hand it back to them and she wasn't content when we made decisions and made professions and just liv...

66:10 - 67:40 Read in full sermon