Who Let The Dogs In?

WHO LET THE DOGS IN?

Matthew 15:21 – 28

In the text before us we find a woman who has a problem.

The Bible tells us that her daughter was vexed by a devil.

Now it does not tell us why it happened. It does not say whose fault it was, whether the mother had done something wrong or whether the little girl had dabbled in something herself. All we do know is that the daughter was now demon-possessed. And I want to suggest to you today, that it’s not really important whose fault it was. We really don’t need to know who the guilty party was.

You see when you are in trouble, it does not matter whose fault it really was.

If you find yourself broke, busted and disgusted, you don’t need an investigator to find out why.

If you’re beaten, bruised and abused, you don’t want to see a commission of inquiry to find out the cause.

If you’re depressed, dejected and rejected, it’s not important to you to probe the reasons behind it. All you really want is some help.

You see church, dying people, broken people, hurt people, used and abused people don’t need to find out why, they need some help.

Now picture this woman’s situation with me this afternoon.

Imagine that you’ve carried this child in your womb for nine months.

Went through the excruciating pain of childbirth.

Nursed her, fed her, changed her.

Watched her grow, take that first step, say her first word, maybe even played peek-a-bo with her.

She’s your little girl. You can still remember her first day of school. How pretty she looked in that dress. You remember how you had to help her with her homework and how she was getting smarter every day.

I can well imagine that they had gone down to JC Penney’s and Sears and done the hobby that most women love, shopping together. (Girl you think this matches my outfit. Does this go well with these shoes? How about this hat, is it me?)

This was her little girl.

Maybe she had been sick before. A cold here. A headache there, maybe even the flu from time to time. But nothing ever like this before.

In the daytime she screams and hollers constantly.

You can’t put new clothes on her because she’ll tear them off.

No longer is her hair in those nice corn-rows and poney-tails that you put them but they are almost all pulled out at the root and the remaining ones are left sticking up. Strange voices come out of her mouth. She can’t eat, she can’t sleep, she can’t play. She is grievously vexed with a devil.

But one thing is constant, those eyes. There’s a strange look in her eyes. Eyes that tell you that this is no ordinary sickness, no ordinary problem, no ordinary trouble.

Can you imagine the helpless feeling of this mother? I’m losing my little girl. I’m losing my little girl. I know that someone in here knows what I’m talking about. Someone knows how it feels like when you are losing your little girl. Losing your little boy. Losing that husband. Losing that wife. Losing that brother or sister. It’s a helpless feeling.

But you know how a mother’s love is. It will go miles in search of help for her child. It will travel late at night, on foot, in the cold and the rain in search of baby food.

I’m sure she had been to the doctors and the psychologists and even with all of their technology they couldn’t help her.

She must have gone to the priest and even though he had sprinkled the holy water over the girl, even after applying two spots of trouble oil on her, he couldn’t help her.

She had been to the witch doctor and even though he took a new leaf from a tall tree in a big forest. Even though he mixed it with a new donkey’s eye with 2 pinches of salt and 4 cloves of garlic, he couldn’t help her.

So finally out of money and options, she is about to give up hope.

Maybe this would be her daughter’s lot in life. Maybe it was true what the neighbors said. She was just crazy and needed to be in an asylum.

Then one day, the news travels into the village that a man was coming to town. He was not just any man. He was no ordinary man.

Oh yeah, she had heard about this man.

Jesus was His name and delivering hopeless people was His claim to fame.

It was this same Jesus who had met a man whose body was withering with leprosy and he touched him and made him whole.

It was this Jesus who had met a paralytic man. A man who had not moved his arms nor his legs for a long time. But Jesus told him to arise, take up your bed and walk and he did.