This wasn't the title for my sermon yesterday. But it perhaps could have been, since this incident makes it look like Jesus doesn't care about this Canaanite woman and her daughter, and that He wouldn't help her until she sort of outsmarted Him.
21 Jesus went away from there, and withdrew into the district of Tyre and Sidon.
“There” – the place Jesus went from, appears to be the land of Genessaret, a plain on the NW shore of the Sea of Galilee. So after having a minor confrontation with the Pharisees and scribes (that we talked about two Sundays ago), in which Jesus condemned them for following the traditions of the elders instead of God’s commands, Jesus went from Jewish territory to the district of Tyre and Sidon. That district was NOT Jewish territory. Most of the people who lived there were descendants of the tribes of people that were driven out of the Promised Land when God gave the land to His people after the Exodus from Egypt. So most of the people living in that district were not Jews, but…Gentiles. And that will be important for us to remember.
22 And a Canaanite woman from that region came out and began to cry out, saying, “Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David; my daughter is cruelly demon-possessed.”
We’re not surprised that the woman who came to Jesus was a Canaanite, since that’s mostly who lived there. What we should be surprised about is what this Gentile, Canaanite woman called Jesus, “Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David.” Calling Jesus “Lord” could have meant that she believed that Jesus was divine. But it also could have just been a sign of respect. But “Son of David” was clear. This woman somehow learned what the OT taught, that a particular descendant of King David would one day come and bring restoration to God’s people and kingdom. The healing miracles that Jesus did were evidence that He was that Son of David. And this woman must have heard about those miracles – since she was asking for one for her daughter.
So this woman is crying out to Jesus on behalf of her daughter. It says that she “began to cry out,” but the kind of word there usually refers to an action that is repeated, which seems to have been the case, judging from the disciples’ reaction in the next verse.
23 But He (Jesus) did not answer her a word. And His disciples came and implored Him, saying, “Send her away, because she keeps shouting at us.”
So this lady keeps crying out to Jesus for help. And Jesus…ignores her. That wasn’t very nice. And it’s not the way Jesus typically treated people, was it? So was He ignoring her because she was a Gentile and not a Jew and, therefore, He had no desire or intention to help her? Or…was He ignoring her at first in order to teach a lesson to His disciples – and to us? We’ll see.
So Jesus ignored the lady at first. But the disciples couldn’t ignore her. They were getting annoyed. So they asked Jesus to send her away.
Now…this is not so simple. If you’re like me, when you first read this, you think that the disciples just want Jesus to get rid of her. “Jesus, tell her to get lost. Send her away without getting what she’s asking for.” But some scholars think that the disciples meant, “Give her what she wants so she’ll go away and leave us alone.” It’s not perfectly clear whether the disciples wanted Jesus to send her away with or without healing her daughter as she was requesting. So while it’s interesting to try to figure this out, we don’t need to know the answer in order to get the point.
24 But He (Jesus) answered and said, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”
Whether the disciples were asking Jesus to heal the woman’s daughter or not, the reason that Jesus didn’t immediately do it is because of what His mission was. “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”
Now…this could sound like Jesus came only for the Jews, and so we Gentiles were and are out of luck. But there are plenty of other things in the Gospels – and even in the Gospel of Matthew – that keep us from arriving at a conclusion like that. The first people recorded in Matthew who worship Jesus are Gentile wise men. Jesus is said to be a “light to the Gentiles.” He healed the servant of a Gentile, Roman centurion and commended that Gentile for his great faith. In Mt 24, Jesus says that before the end comes, the Good News of the kingdom of heaven will be preached to all the nations – and “nations” and “Gentiles” is the same word. And the Gospel ends with Jesus giving the great commission – to make disciples of all nations – of all the Gentiles. So there is no way that Jesus means that He’s only here to help the Jews, but that we Gentiles are out of luck.
But…there is still a matter of priority. It’s not that the Jews are more important than the Gentiles. But…the mission to the Jews was to be first chronologically – in time. The Jews were the descendants of those to whom God had made promises that led up to the arrival of Jesus – people like Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. And because of that, it was important for the Jews to see and hear this Good News first, before it was the Gentiles’ “turn.”
So there is a good chance that when Jesus says, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel,” what He means is, “Although my death and resurrection will result in the salvation of people – Gentiles – from every nation, my personal ministry of preaching and teaching and healing – during my earthly life – is meant for the Jews. It is my disciples who will take that ministry to the Gentiles.”
So you see that Jesus could have been explaining that His personal ministry – during those three or three-and-a-half years – was a mission to the Jews that He had been sent on, even though it would eventually bless all the nations. In other words, if Jesus never spoke to, preached to, or healed a Gentile, He would have still fulfilled the purpose for which He had been sent. This is why the book of Romans repeats the phrase “to the Jew first, and also to the Greek” (1:16; 2:9,10).
It’s tough to tell whether Jesus said this only to the disciple, or also to the Canaanite woman. But whether she what Jesus said or not, she wasn’t giving up…
25 But she came and began to bow down before Him, saying, “Lord, help me!”
So not only did this lady call Jesus “Lord” and “Son of David,” now she was bowing down on her face to plead for Jesus’ help. And Jesus decided it was time to speak directly to her.
26 And He answered and said, “It is not good to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.”
Now this doesn’t sound very nice, does it? Is Jesus really calling this lady and her daughter dogs? The Jews were in the habit of calling Gentiles dogs. So it’s not impossible.
But it seems that Jesus is really just making the point that things should be used as they are intended to be used. When parents buy bread for their children (notice that it’s the children’s bread referred to here) – when parents buy bread for their children, it would be wrong to take that bread and throw it to the dogs instead of to the children. The dogs would be satisfied at the children’s expense. The children would go hungry. They would go without what they needed and what was meant for them.
We get a little bit of help from the Gospel of Mark here. There are a number of true stories in the Gospels that are told in more than one of the Gospels. And because space was limited and because each of the Gospel writers had a specific purpose in writing under the Holy Spirit’s inspiration, sometimes one of them would include details that another didn’t. Here is how Mark (7:27) records what Jesus said at this point. “Let the children be satisfied first, for it not good to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.”
What do we see from Mark? That Jesus’ point was not about Jews being children and Gentiles being dogs, so that Jews matter and Gentiles don’t. His point was that there is a proper order that must be followed. Jesus’ earthly ministry was for the Jews. But, as Eph 2:13 says, those “who formerly were far off (Gentiles) have been brought near by the blood of Christ.” The death of Jesus would forever change things for the Gentiles. Before the death of Jesus, their only hope of being one of God’s people was to become Jewish, which they could do. But once Jesus died, the door was open for them to receive forgiveness and eternal life without becoming Jewish.
But when Jesus and this woman had this conversation, they were still living in the time of “let the children be satisfied first.” So Jesus wasn’t telling her that God didn’t care about her. But He was telling her that the personal ministry that He had been sent to perform was meant for the Jews. And…He seems to have been setting her up for an expression of great faith – (1) because we and the disciples need to know what “great faith” is, and (2) because the object of her great faith points to the amazing quality of God’s grace.
Listen to what she said in response to Jesus…
27 But she said, “Yes, Lord; but even the dogs feed on the crumbs which fall from their masters’ table.”
Now…it’s important to notice how the woman might have responded to Jesus. If you were asking someone for help, and they said something to you like Jesus said to this woman – (It’s not good to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs) – you might get a little upset – especially if you felt that, at some level, you had a right to expect them to help you.
You might say, “What? Am I a dog? Am I worthless? Don’t I matter too?”
But what does this woman say? First of all, she agrees with Jesus. “Yes, Lord,” she says. “You’re right. What was meant for the children should not be taken away from the children and given to someone or something it was NOT meant for. You’re right.”
She doesn’t act like Jesus has any kind of obligation to help her. She doesn’t ask Jesus to adjust his mission or to make an exception. But she does believe that if she, like the little house dogs that ate the table scraps that fell on the floor, could just get a little bit of the leftovers – the overflow – of God’s grace through Jesus, that it would be enough…to heal her daughter.
“Lord, I’m not asking you to give me what belongs to someone else. Surely the grace that you give to the lost sheep of the house of Israel is so great, so huge, that even when you take care of them, there would be crumbs left over for me. Lord, could I just have a crumb of your grace, even though it wasn’t meant for me?”
And points are made about God’s grace and about what it means to have “great faith” – points we’ll come back to. So Jesus heals the woman’s daughter of the demonization that she was suffering from.
28 Then Jesus said to her, “O woman, your faith is great; it shall be done for you as you wish.” And her daughter was healed at once.
Some observations made on the basis of this passage:
What about God's grace should amaze us?
1. As Gentiles, we have no right to expect God’s grace
2. Even God’s leftovers are powerful.
3. If Gentiles are outsiders who have no right to expect to receive or experience God’s grace…and if even the leftovers of God’s grace that Jesus was free to give to outsiders was enough to heal a demonized girl…then just what can we Gentiles expect from God now that (1) by faith in Jesus we’ve been incorporated among God’s people so that we are no longer outsiders, and (2) we are now the rightful recipients of grace of God that is intended for the children and we don’t have to settle for the leftovers?
What does it mean to have “great faith”?
1. Great faith is faith that Jesus cares even for those He has not obligated Himself to care for.
2. Great faith is faith that Jesus has enough grace to fulfill His obligations and still have leftovers.
3. Great faith is faith that doesn’t give up when our prayers aren’t immediately answered.
4. Great faith is the faith of someone who knows they don’t deserve what they are asking for.
Ultimately, great faith is faith that God's grace is great.
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