Let's talk about it.
THE SILENCE OF GOD, AND THE CRUMB THAT CHANGED EVERYTHING.

I need to share with you a sermon, which is actually a story, I first heard over twenty years ago. It came from a pastor named Lyle Albrecht, and what he shared has stayed with me all these years, becoming a precious pearl.

Pastor Lyle stood before his congregation and he bagan with these simple words: "Three years had passed."

In their home nestled somewhere among the Idaho pines, the family had gathered, his daughter, her children, his youngest son, his wife Peggy and himself.

But there was an empty chair. Their middle child, Terry, was far away in Vermont. And if you've ever had a child living at a distance, you know how that absence becomes a daily wonder, a wish, a desire to know, how are they doing.

They were just sitting down to dinner when the telephone rang. Lyle's son Troy answered. Listened. Then turned to his father and said: "Dad. It's for you."

A voice on the other end. Professional. Careful. The kind of voice that has delivered bad news so many times before.
"Mr. Albrecht? The voice asked. "You have a son, Terry, in Vermont?" "Yes." Then a pause. The kind where time becomes a torment.

"We're sorry to tell you he's been in a very tragic automobile accident. And we're not sure he's going to live."

Now here is where Lyle could have done like some preachers do and performed for us. He could have stood tall and told us how faith rose up like a lion in his chest. He could have described how he dropped to his knees and quoted Hebrews chapter eleven from memory while angels hovered in the rafters.

But he did not do that. He said, and I will never forget this, "I wish I could tell you that at that moment I was a great paragon of faith and confidence and strength. I wasn't."

That is the sound of a man telling the truth. And truth, I have learned, is the only soil where real encouragement ever grows.

Let me pause here to say what he said: "Terry survived. After surgeries, Terry came back to health." And Lyle thanks God for that. But the story was never really about the ending. It was about the middle.

Lyle asked the congregation a question.
A raw, deep, sould searching one.
"Has any of you here ever wished you had more faith? Better faith?"
Hands may have went up. Of course they did. Yours would have too. Mine did, and I was only listening to the sermon audio.

Because we all know Hebrews 11. We've nodded along to it at Bible studies and funerals and Wednesday night prayer meetings. "Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." Beautiful words. Poetic.

And then comes verse six, which is less like poetry and more like a surgeon's knife: "Without faith it is impossible to please God."

Concerning these verses, Lyle admitted what most of us only whisper to ourselves. on that night, he found himself wishing God had used simpler language. Couldn't you have spoken, Lord, in a way I could actually understand? What do you mean: "Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen?"

He wanted to hold faith. To put it on a table. To take a knife, not a spiritual one, but a real one, a kitchen knife and dissect it. Cut it open. See its anatomy. Learn its secret chambers. And then, build a great faith for himself.

You understand this, don't you? The desperate desire to have Scripture make sence, when circumstances brings you to the edge of painful uncertainty.

Now he said, one day something happened. He was reading Matthew's gospel. Chapter fifteen. A story he had read dozens of times before, the kind of passage your eyes glide over because you think you already know what it says.

But this time, it leapt. He said, it grasped his mind and held it as if in a vice grip and wouldn't let him go. And in that story, just a few short verses, barely a paragraph, he found what he had been looking for. The elements of a great faith. Not in a theological outline. Not in a sermon series. But in a woman's real life story. A foreign woman. A woman whose name we never learn.

Now let me tell you the story as he told it, because the telling matters.

Jesus travels into the coastal region of Tyre and Sidon. And a local woman comes to Him, crying out, not politely, not with religious decorum, but with the raw throat of a mother whose daughter is shattered by a demon. "Lord, have mercy on me, Son of David!"

She calls Him by His Jewish title. She has no right to that name. She is not of the house of Israel. But desperation doesn't care about credentials. And Jesus? Well, Jesus answers her not one word. Let that sink in a moment. The Son of God, who spoke galaxies into existence, who never turned away a seeking soul, He stood in front of this weeping mother and said nothing.

The disciples, those twelve ordained preachers as Lyle called them, grew annoyed. They say: "Lord, send her away. She's bothering us. She's just a complainer. A whiner. She's in our way." Not one of them said, "Lord, help her." Not one.

Jesus finally breaks His silence, but not with a healing. He says, "I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel."

In other words, He is saying: "Woman you do not meet the requirements for my help." This is a locked door. A closed border. A theological barrier.

But the woman does something extraordinary. She doesn't leave. She pushes through the silence, through the disciples' hostility, through Jesus's own words and she comes closer. She falls down. She worships Him and cries out, "Lord, help me."

And Jesus says something that shocks us. Something that, if we're honest, makes us uncomfortable. "It is not right to take the children's bread and throw it to the dogs."

The children are Israel. The dogs are Gentiles. This is a cultural insult of the highest order. He was saying: it is not right to take what belongs to the children of Israel and give it to a dog like her.

Watch what she does now. Because this is where Lyle said everything changed for him. She doesn't argue. She doesn't storm off in offense. She doesn't lecture Jesus about political correctness or racial sensitivity. She says: "That's true, Lord. Yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master's table."

You're right, she says. I have no claim. No birthright. No covenant. I am not one of the children. I am not entitled to the bread.
But even dogs get crumbs.

Martin Luther once said that with those words, this woman had gathered all the promises of God into one huge bundle and laid them at Jesus's feet. The bundle was so big that Jesus was unable to step over it and walk away.

She took His apparent rejection and turned it into an argument for mercy. And Jesus, the same Jesus who had been silent, who had seemed cold, who had called her a dog, Jesus broke open like the sky with its showers of blessings. "O woman, great is your faith! Be it done for you as you desire."
And her daughter was healed. That very moment. Not later. Not after a season of testing. That very hour.

Now, Pastor Lyle laid out what he saw in this story. Three tests. And as he named them, I realized he was also describing his own experience.

FIRST TEST: People who should help you, won't. The disciples. Twelve ordained ministers. Instead of advocating for her, they tried to run her off.

Lyle said: "When we visit people who have left the Church, they often pour out stories of how they were hurt by the former pastor or the head elder... And tragically, they're often telling the truth."

But this woman wouldn't be driven away. She clung. She persisted. She hung on even when twelve preachers told her to go away. Lyle's point was this: If your faith is real and centered in Christ, all the forces of darkness combined and all the folks in the church, including preachers, can never drive you from His presence.
He mentioned that Jesus still went to the synagogue every Sabbath, even though the religious system of His day was corrupt. The Church was a mess and yet Jesus went there anyway.

SECOND TEST: The silence of God.
This is the hardest one. The one that breaks the strong and humbles the proud.

Sometimes we pray through the night. Your pillow is soaked. You beg, you bargain, you weep until your throat is raw. And heaven seems to say nothing in response.

Lyle pointed to John the Baptist. The same John who had pointed to Jesus and cried, "Behold the Lamb of God!" That John, sitting in Herod's dungeon, with no visit from Jesus, sent messengers to ask: "Are you the one, or should we look for another?" Six weeks. That's all it took, Lyle said, for this great faith to corrode under the silence of God.

The silence of God is not proof of His absence. It is the furnace where counterfeit faith burns away and real faith is refined.

THIRD TEST: When God finally speaks, His words seem like rejection.
"It's not right to take the children's bread and throw it to the dogs."
Imagine hearing that from Jesus. The One you came to for help. And He calls you a dog.

But here is the secret and Lyle said it quietly, as if he was letting us in on something precious: She took what He gave her. She didn't demand the bread. She accepted the crumb. And the crumb, it turns out, was enough. Because the crumb came from the Master's table. And one crumb from Jesus is a feast.

Here is what Lyle discovered and here is what I want you to carry away with you today. Great faith is not dramatic. It is not the stuff of revival tents and television miracles. Great faith is a mother who will not stop praying. A father who stays on his knees even when God is silent. A person who, when told they don't belong, says, "That's true. But even the crumbs are enough."

Great faith is stubborn hope. It is refusing to let go of an unseen hand when every visible thing tells you there is no hand at all.

I don't know where you are as you read this. Maybe you are in the middle of your own tragic night. The phone has rung. The news has come. And God is silent.

Maybe you have been hurt by the Church. By people who should have helped you but instead tried to drive you away. Maybe the pastors and the elders and the dear Christian ladies have failed you. And you're wondering if it's even worth staying.

Maybe you feel like a dog at the table. Like you have no right to ask. Like your past is too stained and your faith is too small.
Well hear this: The woman came with nothing but need. No credentials. No pedigree. She came with a broken daughter and a desperate heart.
And Jesus called her faith great.
Because she would not let go. Because she took the silence and the rejection and the insult and she turned them into a plea for crumbs. And the crumbs healed her daughter.

Lyle ended his sermon with something that felt less like a conclusion and more like a poem. I want to give it to you now, the way he gave it to his listeners.

When family, friends and church seem uncaring. When God Himself seems silent. If you still cling. If you still persist. If you refuse to let go of that unseen hand. Then you too have a great faith. Not because you feel strong. But because you are still holding on.

Have faith in God, though sometimes you must weep.
Have faith in God, though sorrows pain you deep.
Have faith in God, His promises He'll keep.
Have faith, dear friends. Have faith in God.

Terry lived. The daughter was healed. And the silence, the terrible, unbearable silence, gave way to a voice that said, "Be it done for you as you desire."

Hold On, Dear Friends. Your Crumb Is Coming.

Gospel Angels Broadcasting