Gooding, David: 3 - Real Dirt and Real Cleansing

Now we read this evening from the gospel by Matthew chapter fifteen. Gospel by Matthew chapter fifteen, and we are to listen in to a conversation between our Lord Jesus and some people of his time. And if we wish to sum it up so that we might gather the gist of what he is saying, we might sum it up in the simple phrase that our Lord is here going to talk on real dirt and real cleansing. Real dirt and real cleansing. Chapter fifteen therefore, of the Gospel of Matthew and verse one. Then they come to Jesus from Jerusalem Pharisees and scribes saying, Why do thy disciples transgress the tradition of the elders? For they wash not their hands when they eat bread. And he answered and said unto them, Why do you also transgress the commandment of God because of your tradition? For God said, Honor thy father and thy mother, and he that speaketh evil of father or mother, let him die the death. But you say, whosoever shall say to his father or his mother, that wherewith thou mightest have been profited by me is given to God, you, he shall not honor his father, and you have made void the word of God because of your tradition. You hypocrites, well did Isaiah prophesy of you, saying, this people honoreth me with their lips, but their heart is far from me. But in vain do they worship me, teaching as their doctrines the precepts of men. And he called to him the multitude and said unto them, hear and understand. Not that which entereth into the mouth defileth the man, but that which proceedeth out of the mouth, this defileth the man. Then came the disciples and said unto him, Knowest thou that the Pharisees were offended when they heard this saying? But he answered and said unto them, Every plant which my heavenly Father planted not shall be rooted up. Let them alone, they are blind guides, and if the blind guide the blind, both shall fall into a pit. And Peter answered and said unto him, Declare unto us this parable. And he said, Are you also even yet without understanding? Perceive you not that whatsoever goeth into the mouth passeth into the belly and is cast out into the draught? But the things which proceed out of the mouth come forth out of the heart, and they defile the man. For out of the heart come forth evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, railings. These are the things which defile the man, but to eat with unwashed hands defiles not the man. Jesus went out thence and withdrew into the parts of Tyre and Sidon. And behold, a Canaanitish woman came out from those borders and cried, saying, Have mercy on me, O Lord, thou son of David. My daughter is grievously vexed with a demon. But he answered her not a word. And his disciples came and besought him, saying, Send her away, for she crieth after us. But he answered and said, I was not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel. And she came and worshiped him, saying, Lord, help me. And he answered and said, it is not meet to take the children's bread and cast it to the dogs. But she said, Yea, Lord. For even the dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their master's table. Then Jesus answered and said unto her, O woman, great is thy faith, be it done unto thee even as thou wilt. And her daughter was healed from that hour. God give us to discover that healing of which the word of God. Now, in our current studies, we are thinking together of the witness of the early church, the early Christians to the Lord Jesus. Their witness that they have discovered him as the Christ, the Son of the living God, the very foundation stone upon which the Christian church is built. And we have been noticing together the interesting way in which they bear their witness to him. For in these chapters, they do not seek to spin us some theological theory, nor even to preach us some carefully laid out doctrine. Rather do they tell us of their own personal experience. How, as they walked around Palestine with this Jesus of Nazareth, they had such experience of him, as presently they discovered for themselves that this Jesus was not merely a preacher, this Jesus was not merely a prophet, this Jesus was none other than the Christ, the Son of the living God, able to save to the uttermost all that came unto God by him. And tonight this will be no exception, as they tell us of some others who came like them to discover that same Savior as they too had discovered. Indeed, in our passage tonight, Matthew introduces us to two groups of people, very, very different groups of people. The first group Matthew tells us of were some of his own fellow Jews, and among those Jews, a very special group. Some, he says, were Pharisees, and some were scribes. Those lots of people, these Jews, were exceedingly religious people, perhaps some of the most religious people in all the Jewish nation. The Pharisees were, as we know, particularly devoted to try to keep the law of God as best they could, and attain to special and superior holiness. Pharisees was their name. It summed up their desire to live a life separate from all evil, separate from all uncleanness, to make themselves holy in the sight of God. And the scribes, for their part, were also religious, but these were more like university professors, or at least theological professors. They had an immense knowledge of the Bible. You could have woken them up in the middle of the night and hit them on the head with a brick and started them off in Genesis twenty two and said, now carry on, my dear fellow, and he would have carried on. They knew vast parts of the Old Testament off by heart, and along with that, all the learned expositions and traditions of the Jewish faith. They were repositories of enormous religious learning, and they wore special clothes, long robes with big borders, and as they went down the street, the ordinary people bowed as they went. They were taught to call them father and rabbi and respect them even more than they respected their own human parents. Religious men, these first group. But alas, says Matthew, they didn't discover Jesus Christ as Savior. They didn't discover him as the Christ, the Son of God. Though they knew all the Bible passages about the Messiah, when the Messiah came, says Matthew, they did not recognize him. Instead, as they listened to him preach, they presently grew offended and upset and exceedingly indignant, and they rejected and eventually crucified him. And then there was another group, two women, a mother and a daughter. Neither, of course, were Jewesses. They were Canaanites, pagans, pure and simple. In all their Gentile darkness and ignorance and sin. Sunk in superstition and idolatry, and the girlie herself wrapped up, caught up in her study of the occult, and now in the grip of an evil spirit. Pagan Gentiles. The wonderful story is that whereas the religious Jews didn't find the Savior nor recognize him, these two Gentiles found the Savior and his great salvation. Reminds me of what St. John says in his gospel, as he tells how the Lord Jesus came first of all to the Jews, his own people, and says John the Evangelist, he says, you know, when the Savior came, he was in the world, and the world was made by him, but the world didn't know him. He came to his own, and his own received him not. But as many as did receive him, to them he gave power to become the children of God, even to those that believe on his name. And I fancy, you know, the same thing happens still. For it is not merely that the Jew finds him and the Gentile, uh, the Jew doesn't find him and the Gentile does, but even in our society, isn't it curious how sometimes it is the very religious people, keen in their religious observance, nevertheless fail to find the Savior? Whereas oftentimes the drug addict, the criminal, the lost, the vicious, these presently come to repentance and receive the Savior and are born again. So first, let us look at this religious group, and why didn't they find the Savior? And what made them grow offended? I first of all, says our Lord Jesus quite bluntly, because their religion was a mere trifling with reality. You see, on the time they observed how our Lord Jesus ate his food at table with his disciples without first washing his hands. And so they criticized the Lord Jesus because, according to them, he had broken the traditions of the elders. Now, it wasn't a Bible command that our Lord Jesus had broken. He broke none of them. But among these very hyper-religious people, they had all sorts of rules and regulations that their scribes and religious teachers had invented. And among these religious rites and ceremonies that they had invented and that were not in the Bible whatsoever, was this rule that before you sat down to meal, you must wash your hands to wash off from it the dirt that had come, not through honestly digging your garden or anything like that, but the dirt that had come from contact with this wicked world around you. So religiously they washed their hands before they ate bread. And our Lord Jesus denounced them, and he told them straight that it was a lot of nonsense, and it was a lot of bunkum, and it's worse than nonsense. For it was trifling with life's most solemn things. Why was it nonsense? Why? Because it did no good. It did nothing to reach the real problem in life. It did nothing to touch real dirt. God knows this is a dirty world enough. And I don't mind whether you be Christian or whether you be atheist. You yourself will admit it, won't you? What a dirty, filthy world this can be. And I'm not thinking merely of the fearful filth of modern immorality, sexually speaking. That can be filthy enough. But all of us know what we mean, don't we, when we say of that man, ah, what a dirty trick he played. We recognize that some tricks in business, in politics, deserve no other name than filthy. It's a dirty trick, we say. Yes, we all know what we mean. And this world is a real dirty place. Why, you can find it in business, you can find it in academic circles, you'll even find it on the sports field, won't you? Where the men in the scrum are beyond giving somebody a kick in the jaw accidentally on purpose. Another dirty trick, isn't it? You've got to win, no matter how you win. It's a filthy, dirty world. And for religion to come in the face of real dirt and offer a fluting little washing of the hand with water. That is to make a mockery of the whole thing. What good does it do? Washing your hands with a little water. Of course, it will do some good if your hands are filthy with some germ or other. It'll do a little good. It will protect your hygiene. But dirt of that kind on our hands isn't the real trouble, is it? It's what my mother used to call clean dirt. The real dirt is the dirt in our hearts. It's not your hands that are the trouble, said Christ, it's your hearts that are the trouble. Not what come goes into a man defiles a man, but what comes out of a man defiles a man, for out of the heart proceed evil thoughts. What a viper's nest our minds can be, can't they? Which one among us would care to have our inward thoughts exposed on a screen for all to read every hour of the day? Isn't it true? All of us, without exception, have known what our Lord means when he says, out of the heart of man proceed evil thoughts. What about those dark moments when you would have freely knifed your opponent? Only prudence kept you back from doing it. But the envy was there, wasn't it? And the jealousy was there. Though you didn't commit the foul deed of murder, inside the heart there was the disposition too. Who of us hasn't been defiled by it? Dirt. The sight of that woman in a better hat than yours, the sight of that man with a better car than yours, and all that filthy evil thing of jealousy and envy. Out of the heart of men proceed evil thoughts, fornications, thefts, false witness, railings. And what should we say of it? Here is real dirt, and it needs to be cleansed. Said Christ, to imagine that you're going to deal with that by a few washings of the hand with tap water is to fool about with reality. Our Lord Jesus denounced these religious people for another reason. So keen had they become on their religious rules and regulations, that there were occasions when, in order to keep their rule and regulation, they opposed the positive command of Holy Scripture. They were very serious. The Old Testament had laid it down as one of the Ten Commandments, thou shalt honor thy father and thy mother. Which means, of course, not merely sending them a card on Mother's Day. It means, when necessary, supporting them and caring for them and requiting them for all that they have done for their children, and in the end, if need be, maintaining them. I shall honor thy father and thy mother. But it can be grossly inconvenient, can't it? And looking after elderly folks can be exceedingly tiresome and trying to the patience and the nerve. I know of what I speak. And these fine religious men had found a way round it. You could, according to their rules, vow some of your spare cash, if you like, to the temple and give it to God. Oh, marvelous thing. Ah, but yes, they had another refinement. You could vow to give your five hundred pounds, your a thousand pounds to the temple, so it was no longer yours. And that meant you couldn't use it to keep up your parents with. Sorry, it ain't mine anymore. It belongs to God. I've given it to God. But if you had a word in the priest's ear, the priest wouldn't mind spending it on what you asked him to spend it on. It was humbug. A veneer of devotion to God. A way out of performing your moral duty. And we Gentiles will have to be careful if we criticize some Jews, shall we not? Oh, how easy religion can be made a cloak for an attitude of heart that doesn't intend to keep the law of God at all. You pay a little cash into the church's coffers to quieten the conscience that does not intend to obey Holy Scripture. You've made the word of God of none effect, and by your tradition, you have stopped people obeying Holy Scripture. And I say again, we of a Christian world as distinct from the Jews, we cannot shout too loudly, can we? But as I think of this charge which our Lord leveled, I think again of the context. He was talking, and they were talking of the need for spiritual cleansing, were they not? And oh, how guilty Christendom has been on this very score. This is a dirty world. The only thing that will cleanse the human heart is what Saint Paul describes in these words. We too were hateful, he says, and hating one another. But after the kindness and love of God our Savior appeared, not by works done in righteousness which we did ourselves, but according to his mercy, he saved us by the washing of regeneration. Thus spoke the apostles, describing that real thing, radical repentance and personal faith in the Lord Jesus, with the positive renewing of the Holy Ghost within a man or woman who has real dealings with God. Alas, how early did Christendom bypass that reality? And like the Jew, instead of demanding of a man that he must be born again by personal repentance and personal faith, Christendom substituted a little washing with holy water. And told people they were born again because they'd been through an innocent little ceremony. Produced what the great and famous Anglican Bishop J.C. Ryle called millions of baptized pagans. This is not a matter for sectarian strife. This is a matter for the realities of time and eternity. Our Holy Lord says, except a man be born again. Let's see the Kingdom of God. We all of us need that washing of regeneration. Is the use... taking a few drops of water and by priestly manipulation, spreading them on the forehead and pronouncing that this human being is now born again. So that thereafter the people think they are born again. Don't any longer need to heed the word of the Savior. You must be born again. Drive some people to despair. They've been through the ceremonies. And it has left their heart untouched. And the tragedy is they think they've seen all that Christianity can give, and it hasn't worked, and it drives them to despair. When the Pharisees heard our Lord Jesus talking like this, they were greatly offended. Not particularly surprised, are you? But Peter was, and somewhat upset and nervous, and he came running after the Lord, and he said, Lord, you will turn your, turn down the tone of your sermon next time, won't you? He said, because the Pharisees, do you know when they heard this, they were offended, and they've not come back. To whom our Lord replied, if they be offended, then let them be offended, for every plant that my Father has not planted shall be plucked up. Oh, my dear friend, excuse my great plainness of speech, there's no good falling about, is it? Real dirt demands real cleansing. Oh, what a sorry thing religion is. If it being the real thing, and I must ask myself as I stand before you, and you should ask yourself, am I a genuine planter? Do I stand rooted by faith in God, in the gospel of Christ? Or am I like those of whom our Lord spoke in the parable of the sower? The seed was sown, it grew up, but there was no real root. And come sun and rain, and it withered away. Anything that isn't the real thing, says Christ, will be plucked up. And if I haven't got the real thing, if all I have is a substitute thing, and I'm religious but not saved, religious but not born again, then the sooner I allow Jesus Christ to show me and pluck it up, the better. That will give me a chance to find the real thing, will it not? Let's pass to the real thing. In this world where dirt is a very real thing, how would anybody get cleansed? Ah, is hope here, isn't there? Lovely hope. Oh, what a lovely gospel. No person is too far from God. No person too filthy. Take the most extreme case you like, and Christ is able to cleanse. Oh, perfect is the flow that makes me white as snow. No other name I know, nothing but the blood of Jesus. Oh, let us see it till the story is told to that end. Have you known, like I have known, the dirt in the human heart? Like the old Puritan said at one stage, there's dirt at the bottom of my tears. Oh, see me crying over other people's wrongs to me, and in the end, if you go too deep, you'll find the mud of my own self-interest. And notice too, if you have known the wretched dirtiness of your heart, there is a fountain, and it can be cleaned. And so Matthew takes as an example of one who found the Savior's cleansing, a Gentile Canaanite woman and her afflicted daughter. Her daughter was demon possessed. Now, please do notice that whereas our Lord Jesus had denounced and attacked a lot of the mere formal Jewish religion, he didn't go to the other extreme like some people do and say, well, the Gentiles were all right and you needn't bother, why bother and make a fuss? For if the Gentile, the Jews with their Bibles and their religious ceremonies still needed to be saved, the Gentiles without their Bibles and without God and without Christ were many of them abominably filthy. What a world the ancient world was, where immorality was common and nothing thought of. Why, when the early apostles wrote their letters to the churches of their new converts, they had to tell Gentiles that fornication was wrong, for they wouldn't have known it. Where the high society engaged in pederasty and homosexuality. Nobody thought anything much about it, though they had a conscience about it. Where unwanted children would be taken and put in crops out on the mountains for the wild beasts to get rid of them. What a cruel, heartless world it was. While a world full of superstition and fear, as people went to the temples and they went to the magic men, and they got themselves all involved with demons. Where often religion itself was a source of corruption. I remember in my youth standing with a tour, a busload of people in the marketplace of old Corinth in Greece. Some of you may have been there. We had a charming Greek guide. She was telling us about the glories of this wonderful city, with its marble-lined streets and its wealth and its beautiful temples. And then she pointed us to an old mound. It looked like a heap of dirt. She said, this was the speaker's platform, ladies and gentlemen, in the day when it was all marble covered and beautiful columns and buildings, this was the speaker's platform where anybody stood who wanted to address the crowd. She said, you know, Saint Paul would have stood here when he addressed, when he came here preaching his gospel. Then she turned around, she said, you see that large hill? There was a young mountain behind, as you know, in Con- she's on top of that when Paul was here, there was a temple, you know, he'd had a thousand priestesses, all every one of them devoted to the goddess Aphrodite, and every one of them open to all comers for the payment of a fee. Said the Greek guide, you know, Paul had a difficult time when he came here. Yes. As he subsequently wrote to some of his converts, no fornicators, nor effeminate, nor immoral people, thieves, robbers, or others shall have any part in the eternal kingdom, and such were some of you. It was a dirty world. But here's a Canaanite woman, and here's a woman who found the Savior and found cleansing and found release and discovered true religion, salvation that works and sets a person free and cleans up the life. Releasing it from the power of Satan. How did she come to it? Two very simple steps. She first of all believed. Great is thy faith, said the Lord Jesus. You say, what does it mean to believe? Well, first of all, it means to accept God's condemnation, God's diagnosis, God's God's description. description. And that can be difficult. Here's this woman, and she came crying after the Savior, said she, son of David, have mercy on me. The Christ took no notice and walked straight on. And she cried again and cried again and kept following them, following them, saying, son of David, have mercy on me. But he took no notice and he made no reply. So much so that the apostles came to the Lord Jesus and they said, look, Lord, this woman, she's making such a shindy after such a scene in the street. Goodness me, send the woman away. Give her what she wants and let her get going. No, said Christ. I wasn't sent except to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. The woman's a Gentile. And it is not me to take the children's bread and give it to the dog. And when the woman heard that, how do you suppose she felt? He called me a dog. And who does he think he is? And I'm as good as his fellow Jews. I know some of them. With all their religious talk and humbug. No, she didn't say that. He called me and my daughter a dog, did he? That's precisely what we are. Some good Christian expositors have become a little nervous here, and they said our Lord didn't really mean to call her a dog. No, no, he wouldn't have done that. He, he used a Greek word. Always beware of those that quote Greek. He used a Greek word that means a little puppy dog. Meant to be, what, a compliment? Suppose somebody calls you a puppy dog... under the table. We're not dealing with you. We're dealing with a Jew. You can call them dogs, you can call them puppy dogs, and you can call them what you will. To a Jew, a puppy dog was only a dog a bit smaller. And all dogs were, by definition, unclean animals. Unclean. We'll see the woman started to come, saying, Jesus, thou son of David. But Jesus, thou son of David, was his title as a Jew. And she wasn't a Jew. She was a plain Gentile. As that scripture reminds us in Ephesians chapter two that says, but call to remembrance that one time you aforetime were Gentile. Called uncircumcision by that which is called circumcision at the flesh. Remember that at that time you were without God, and without hope, and without Christ in the world. Not knowing the true God, worshiping demons, worshiping idols. No relationship with the Messiah, and therefore no hope in history. No hope. Uncircumcised. Unclean. When our Lord Jesus pointed it out to the woman, marvelously, she said, yes, Lord, that's true of me. What a wise woman she was. What's the good of arguing those Pharisees is just as bad as I am, if not a bit worse? That won't make her any better, will it? You know some more hypocritical religious people? Well, that's a sorry story. May well be true. That won't help you, sir. We've got enough to see after our own lives, haven't we? What's the good of saying I'm better than those Pharisees when at home a girl was in the grip of a demon? Oh mother, has your boy gone on glue sniffing? Your girl gone on drugs? No good saying that you're better than the woman down the road. That won't help anything. You've got a real problem. You're someone that needs to be saved. The only way to get saved is first of all to recognize what's wrong with us. We're Gentiles, unclean, lost, and sad to relate, in the power of Satan. Does that seem strong language to you? Well, now this is authentic Christianity. This is reality. Bible says that the world lies in the very arms of the evil one. Will you say, my boy is just a little bit maladjusted? Oh, well, he may be, I'm sorry to hear it, but he and the rest of us, by nature, there's something worse than that. Says Saint Paul, he was sent by the living Christ to release men from the power of. And this is the power that we've got to get free of, if ever we're going to be cleansed. We should not get rid of it, unless first we face it. That's what repentance means. It means not merely admitting that being unkind to your maiden aunts is a bad thing. It means that we are in the grip of Satan, lost! And only Christ can save us. And so, first of all, she faced reality, good woman, and admitted Christ's diagnosis. She was a dog. Have you got there? You say I'm not a dog. Be careful, preacher. Oh no, not a full-grown dog. You'll know how Satan are you. Just a little puppy dog? Oh, how nice puppy dogs look, don't they? Puppy dogs grow up to be big dogs, and puppy dogs have got dog nature, be they big or small. And all have sinned and do come short. Her faith issued in repentance, facing reality, owning to her lostness. And her faith took the next step. What was that? She cast herself on the grace of God. Yes, I'm a Gentile, she said. Yes, I'm a dog. I desperately need salvation for my daughter, and I have no right to it. Oh Lord, I admit that. I have no right to it. I have no claim on it. I don't deserve it. But oh Lord, she said, don't forget how big God's table is and how rich it is. He's the God of the Jews, is he? But I know it, how often his grace has forgiven them. There have been some sinners among them too. And if his grace is big enough to forgive Jews, then there'll be just a little bit over, if no more, that might slip off the table for us Gentiles too. For she said, Lord, you know, even the little puppy dogs, dogs they are, and if they get in the way, the guests kick them under the table. But they're under the table and catch the crumbs. Was anybody who had any wealth at all, his table would be so full of food that there'd be some bits accidentally fell off, and the old curs underneath got it. Lord, she said, oh, I know I don't deserve it. I know I've a due. I don't claim on it. But you see, she says, God is so big and so gracious that when he's fed his people Israel, it must be there's a crumb or two left over for me and my daughter. Oh, how delightful, said Christ. Oh, how delightful. Oh, my dear good woman, what you've seen in this moment, the rabbis galore have never seen. The God who condemns our sin is a God of infinite mercy. He's rich to all that call upon him in truth. For there is no difference, but whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved. Grace abounding over all my sin. For where sin abounded, grace did much more abound. I don't care who you are, what kind of a dog you've been, what kind of a bitch. None of us really better than the other. Perhaps a bit of religion has kept some of us restrained, but our hearts are the same as everybody else's hearts. And there's a God so gracious that he can cleanse me and cleanse you. Free in for nothing. By grace, you have been saved through faith, and not of yourselves. It is a gift of God. For you may remember, some of you, two weeks ago, we were thinking of a story of a woman and her daughter and the king, weren't we? And now tonight we have a story of a woman, her daughter, and the king of kings. Yes? Do you remember in that first story that the king didn't want to execute the prophet, did he? But the woman made him do it against his will and got her own way. And you have heard tonight, haven't you, that when this woman came for her daughter to the great king of kings, at first she took no notice. Oh, but she wasn't going to have that. She was going to make him. Ha. He- she was going to get what she wanted for her daughter, and she got it. Two stories they tell of two women, and those two women, what they did about this business of uncleanness. Just listen again. For we should be one woman or the other ourselves. And there was the first woman. She was already a princess, but the chance came to marry the king, but she was already married. Ah. But for a life of pleasure and gaiety and power and influence, she wasn't going to be so old fashioned as to take notice of God's laws. All this adultery business, all the film stars do it. So she ditched her first husband, and she married King Herod. How about then gained God's prophet protesting against the uncleanness of it. How can you enjoy yourself with a miserable Jeremiah like that shouting in your ears that it's against the rules of God? Old fashioned nut. He must silence his voice. So she had him put in prison. And Herod said, that's enough, my dear, we mustn't go further than that because it wouldn't be politically wise to have the man executed. She said to herself, I'll show him. He thinks he's master of himself. I can make him do what I like, actually. I got the measure of him. And she had a daughter. And she sent the girl in and danced, and it wasn't a very, very clean dance. But she knew how to get her way. And the king was carried away. He said, what do you want? I'll give you anything. Yet I want the head of John the Baptist on a dish on this table. That's all I want. You see, you can't enjoy uncleanness, can you, with the word of God keep dinging in your ear that it's unclean. That will spoil the fun. So at the end, she had what she wanted. There was the head on the dish and the tongue, forever silent. And she had the gaiety, and she had the uncleanness. And eventually Jesus Christ came, and it made her husband think of eternity and the resurrection, and at last he got his opportunity to see Christ, and Christ wouldn't speak to him. He too was silent. Isn't that what she wanted? Silent. And she's gone out. Listen, friend, this is one way with uncleanness. You say it's fun. I would think where that woman may be this evening. As the Bible, there are two destinies. There's a heaven, a glorious golden Jerusalem, and there is the lake of fire. Says the Bible curtly, blessed are those that get into that holy eternal city. Why are they blessed? For all sorts of reasons, but for this too, because outside is the filthiest company you ever imagined. Outside are dogs. Or think well, perhaps what I have said, perhaps what the Savior has said, has cut deep and offended you. It wasn't said unkindly, but uncleanness leads to hell. I can stop speaking and shelter in a moment. You can ask Christ to shut up. The danger is he might do precisely that. That. And let uncleanness have its way with you forever. I say again, hell is a filthy place because of its filthy company. What of this other woman? Ah, she made the king do, uh, what she wanted, didn't she? She's a daughter that needed to be saved from the power of Satan, and she came crying after the Lord, "Thou son of David, have mercy," and he took no notice, and thus he went on, and it would appear he wasn't going to give her what she wanted, but she said, "This won't do, I'm going to get what I want. I'm going to make him." Make him? What made the great son of David stop and grant her what she wanted? Yes, he was going to make him. All these good women that get their men to do what they want. This woman did, didn't she? How did he do it? He took her place as a sinner and said, yes, Lord, it's true, I'm a dog. And she cast herself on the grace of God, and that very day found salvation. You want salvation? Oh, friend, you could make the very King of Kings stop in his tracks tonight. You could stop the very choirs of heaven, they're singing, and have them here concentrated on actually speed, while you made the King of Kings. Do what you want and save your soul. Oh, let us repent of our sin. Let us cast ourselves on the grace of God, and the great Savior himself will be delighted as he proves the truth of his promise. Whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved.