We have a story here in Matthew that you might miss the lesson,

and you might even be offended by the story,

if you come from a culture that's extremely painfully entitled.

An entitled culture might read this like,

oh, that's not very nice, and boy,

I don't know if I like what Jesus did here.

Entitlement is kind of a funny thing. We have been raised in a culture that pretty much were entitled. You know, we are way more than entitled. And in the latest, earliest

generations that we have are perhaps more entitled than others. And it's happened even in the

last several generations, you know. I think the last

generation that was really not entitled to kind of an end of degree was the Depression era. You know,

some of our great grandparents or grandparents who lived during those times, entitlement was not

as much of a thing back then. But it sure has become that, the more comfortable we've become. But we've got to watch

out because the word entitlement, it just means belief that one is deserving or entitled of certain

privileges. And the Bible teaches the opposite of that. If you approach this story kind of with that

in mind that we all deserve death and hell,

you know, everything after that becomes pretty good.

After death and hell, eternal death and hell and suffering in hell for all eternity,

you know, things look pretty bright after you start improving from that.

And that's kind of what's going to happen in this story

and part of the thing that we have to keep in the back of our mind. And it's the story of the Cyro-Fanishan woman. Or you might call it the

woman a Canaanite who was from Tyre and Sidon, which is another way of saying it, but was not

from Israel. Jesus makes his way up into what is today southern Lebanon.

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