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Grace be unto you

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and peace

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from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

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Kind of dawned on me as I was working on this sermon I guess not the 

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first time.

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The scriptures are really put together in just magnificent ways

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sometimes connections that might not have occurred to us reading and

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certainly if we were the authors ourselves, but well there's a reward.

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Going back regularly.

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Like today the Gospel reading is a reading of the Canaanite woman

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who comes to the Lord. That begins at verse 21.

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Now for context however we go all the way back to the first verse of

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the chapter. Which reads like this.

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Some Pharisees

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and some teachers of the law came from Jerusalem

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to see Jesus.

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Sounds a little ominous doesn't it and it probably was because you get the

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feeling that what inspired there.

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What happened is a pretty heated discussion of in this case the enduring

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sanctity of the tradition of the elders. Which they felt that certainly

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the disciples were not doing right by.

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And after that discussion moved probably people involved moved too. The

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discussion as to who or what is clean and unclean?

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And it's not like any answer was given finally to that kind of report.

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Kind of a wrap up or anything things just kind of stopped. And then we

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moved to verse 21 which says and leaving Galilee Jesus withdrew to the

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region of Tyre and Sidon. Kind of an abrupt change.

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An Abrupt change of place too.

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Tyre and sidon for crying out loud

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that's Lebanon in today's maps. Tyre and Sidon a long ways away from home

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home turf.

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What in the world draws Jesus to Lebanon?

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And I'm sure that's what the disciples were

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wondering too. What are we doing here?

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Now

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probably helps us understand why the disciples reacted as they did to

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what comes next namely this Gentile woman.

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Who has the audacity

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to March your way straight

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to Jesus.

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Women didn't do that kind of thing in those days.

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Kind of like channeling those Pharisees and teachers of the

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law.

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The disciples said

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send her away.

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I suspect they felt you know

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she was flaunting

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cultural and religious propriety by marching right up to Jesus like

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that.

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Talking to him wanting something of him.

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Besides that this one was certainly not of the daughters of Abraham.

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Send her away and I bet they didn't say that with a whisper.

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Just by the by little a little detour here.

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I suspect the disciples weren't yet in a position to understand that

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Jesus might just be preparing them for the day when Jesus would send

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them.

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Not away.

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Send them actually to

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people, people,

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like people who live in Tyre and Sidon.

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And

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in Wuhan and in Novosibirsk

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and in Tehran.

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Clean and unclean most of them maybe unclean.

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And what the Lord was doing was beginning

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with this one person.

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Who made her own way to Jesus is not like Jesus sent the disciples for

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her that day will come.

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She made her own way.

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It's underway.

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We started.

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No,w Jesus did respond to the woman

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rather

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gruffly maybe that's even too soft a word.

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I was sent

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only

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to the lost sheep of Israel.

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It's not right there for to take

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the children's bread

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and give it to the dogs.

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You don't often have in scripture the kind of thing

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the disciples said.

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Send her away nor do you often have the Lord responding like this and

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I just met you on the disciples heard that their ears perked up,

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right?

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At the same time the woman,

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I can't believe it,

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was neither

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distracted nor was she deflated nor was she.

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What's the word throw it away.

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Nor was she driven away.

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Yes, Lord

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but

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even the dogs eat the crumbs that

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the fall from the master's table.

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I think the key word here

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and it's the key word for my purposes here,

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there are several others that qualify. The keyword here

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however is not dogs.

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It's crumbs.

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Crumbs of Grace,

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crumbs of mercy somehow she got it, some how she understood

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crumbs a crumb or two of

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the Lord's Grace

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was all she asked for.

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That was sufficient to her.

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I think in a latter day Paul may have been channeling a lot of

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channeling in scripture, by the way.

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Might have been channeling her,

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what do you figure?

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Marvelous scene,

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but the disciples

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I think this was not necessarily a high spot in their years of

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following Jesus.

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I have a feeling that had I been among them there I would have just as

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well.

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I would have felt that it was just would be just as well that this

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whole incident, send her away, be somehow thrown into the trash bin of the world

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the world's history.

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But here it is.

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It's in the gospel for crying out loud

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it's part of the Gospel.

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Matthew was one of those.

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Send her a away people and he puts it in his gospel.

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It is by miraculous

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presence of the Lord

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his worst hour becomes his finest witness.

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Lord responded immediately to her took a little longer with the

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disciples a little longer of teaching and patience and understanding and forgiveness.

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And he pulled them along and I think the high point is that who is when

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they reached

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point at which they kind of got it. Like the women did when they reach

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the foot of the cross.

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And heard that history turning prayer of the Lord. Father

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forgive them

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for they don't know what they're doing.

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And I think the they and the them is not only those people responsible

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for putting Jesus on the cross.

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I think it is for those whose

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send her away was their own form of betrayal.

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So

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who was the Lord,

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who was the Lord reaching out to?

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in this unexpected trip

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to Gentile territory?

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Obviously the woman.

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Who understood.

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Who understood the dynamite in the crumbs.

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You know that same dynamic it's not just here in scripture you have the

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feeling in other words the trip that Jesus made to Tyre and Sidon was

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in order for him to be there for her before she even realized.

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Kind of like sort of recalls the same thing the Lord kind of set

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things up for him to be at that well so that when this woman with a

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troubled history came, he was there for her. Kind of like when Jesus

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was on the cross and by happy happenstance, there just happened to be

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another one there in the Lord's crumbs are dropping all over the

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place.

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Scripture is full of a lot of these

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happy happenstances.

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Although this kind of sounds almost like a parable, doesn't it?

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And maybe sometimes history works

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well as a parable that is it doesn't just recite facts and names and

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whatever it calls people in.

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Like that woman

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and like Matthew and the disciples.

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Who's embarrassment and his lack of understanding and continual lack

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of understanding,

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becomes his witness to this day

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to this place.

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To clean and the unclean.

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To

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the children of Abraham and to the,

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yep looks like a lot of Gentiles here.

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Whether in other words

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the woman or Matthew whether clean or unclean whether you or I

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we all live

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by the crumbs. 

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 A little crumb of Grace.

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Goes a long way,

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in fact takes us all the way.

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Little crumb of Grace is kind of 

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the way the Lord does things to.

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It's kind of like

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that little it doesn't hold a whole lot, but that little bit of

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water

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a baptism

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a little crumb.

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Kind of like

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the bread

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and the wine that we put out doesn't look like all that much.

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The crumb

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of grace.

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Because the Lord is there.

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Because the Lord energizes that because the Lord comes to us through

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that.

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And they

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are sufficient.

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I commend you to take this morning's sermon crumb.

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Don't say crumby.

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The sermon crumb with you and hang on to it as you continue reading

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your scripture.

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And see how many crumbs pop up all over that book and you can read the

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lives of brothers and sisters around you.

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Bottom line

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treasure the crumbs.

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In the name of our Lord.

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Amen.