Last week Jesus was dealing with the scribes and the Pharisees again about them leading people towards man’s traditions, but not actually towards the words and commands of God. That’s something that we absolutely still need to be careful of in this day and age. And Jesus is still going to be breaking through tradition barriers today, let’s read our passage.
Read Matthew 15:21-28
This can be a difficult passage to deal with at face value. But I think as we work our way through this that there is a lot to learn from what is going on here. And first off, like I just mentioned from last week, Jesus was challenging the Jewish traditions in regard to the hand washing stuff, but this whole event today would also be a challenge to their traditions as well. Because Jesus was now traveling into Gentile territory.
Pretty much all of Jesus’ ministry so far has been around the Sea of Galilee. That’s why they frequently jump on a boat and travel to other areas around the sea and often end up back in Capernaum which was right on the northern shore of the sea. But now we’re seeing Jesus take off to a place called Tyre and Sidon. Tyre was about 34 miles to the northwest from Capernaum and Sidon was an additional 24 miles north of that along the Mediterranean Sea. Both of these cities are located in modern day Lebanon. The last-mentioned location as we have been following Jesus was in a town near Capernaum, but now they are traveling northwest to these new areas.
And this would be a problem. The Jews weren’t supposed to engage with the gentiles. Their traditions said that doing so would now make them unclean. But Jesus walks right past the boundaries of their traditions and into the gentile lands and let’s see what happens next.
Read Matthew 15:22a
“And behold, a woman of Canaan came from that region and cried out to Him”
It’s interesting how Matthew words this. Usually, Matthew is fairly casual with how people or events are introduced. For example, in verse one of this chapter, Matthew says basically “then these guys came to Jesus saying”. But here in verse 22, it’s “AND BEHOLD”. The wording here is really calling the person reading this Gospel to stop and pay attention. Like there is something important going on here and you really need to see what it is. If you remember we have talked a few times about how Matthew’s focus in writing this Gospel was for a Jewish person to read it. And for that audience, the characteristics of this person, would have made this quite interesting ,when we think about the culture, traditions, and history involved.
For one, this is a woman and the reality of the ancient world kind of made women out as second-class citizens. For two, she was a gentile and a Jewish person and especially a rabbi or teacher wouldn’t have anything to do with her. And thirdly, she wasn’t just any old gentile, Matthew specifically mentions her as a Canaanite, which are the ancient enemies of the nation of Israel.
And so, Matthew is like “BEHOLD”, or pay attention to who is approaching Jesus at this moment. And this gives us some context to the situation.
Read Matthew 15:22
So, this Canaanite woman cries out to Jesus about her demon possessed daughter. But then what happens in verse 23?
Read Matthew 15:23
Jesus didn’t say anything. And then His disciples jump in and are like “send her away, because she keeps yelling and crying after us”. Some look at this statement by the disciples and believe that they were essentially telling Jesus to just fix her issue so that she would leave them alone. But others think that they might simply have been annoyed and wanted Jesus to just make her leave. But instead of doing that, Jesus responds to them in verse 24.
Read Matthew 15:24
Jesus basically says that He was sent specifically for the “lost sheep” of the house of Israel. It sounds like this response was towards His disciples, but it sounds like the woman here probably heard it as well. And this response may seem kind of weird, but it kind of defines the method or the focus of Jesus’ ministry at that time.
We see a passage like Jeremiah 50:6 that defines the lost sheep:
“My people have been lost sheep.
Their shepherds have led them astray;
They have turned them away on the mountains.
They have gone from mountain to hill;
They have forgotten their resting place.
We saw Jesus direct the disciples towards the lost sheep in Matthew 10:5-6 when HE sent them out:
These twelve Jesus sent out and commanded them, saying: “Do not go into the way of the Gentiles, and do not enter a city of the Samaritans. 6 But go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.
Jesus’ primary mission field during His ministry was the Jewish people. He didn’t travel the whole world with His message while He was here, He taught throughout Israel and raised up others to take the message further. It’s what we see in all of the great commission passages, like Acts 1:8:
But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be witnesses to Me in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.”
Jesus’ response to His disciples reinforced what His primary mission was while He was here. To teach and to reach the lost sheep, or the people of Israel. But the plan was obviously to go beyond the borders of Israel and ultimately, we see a glimpse of that in where this ends up. But for the moment, the Canaanite woman sounds like she at least heard Jesus’ response here and we see her response in verse 25.
Read Matthew 15:25
It’s interesting that even in light of Jesus staying quiet and then Jesus making this comment about His focus on Israel that this woman’s resolve hasn’t been shaken. it sounds like she maybe moves even closer, she’s not just crying out after them like the disciples said, she’s right there now by Jesus and it says that she worships Him and says, “LORD HELP ME!”
Her resolve wasn’t shaken, she must see and understand something about Jesus that compels her further, maybe it’s just the stories of His works, maybe she totally understands the truth, but now she gets a response directly from Jesus in verse 26.
Read Matthew 15:26
At verse glance, this verse probably takes us back a little bit. Like what in the world did Jesus just say? But what hurts us here in just reading this is that we can’t see His mannerisms, we can’t hear the tone of His voice, and even the subtlety of the meaning of the words themselves are a little lost in translation when it was put into English.
This sounds like a really odd and somewhat harsh statement and in some ways it actually is. But I think that the way that Jesus said this probably came across differently than what it sounds like for us when we read it. It’s obvious through scripture that the Jews did not like the gentiles and even to the point that they used derogatory terms for them. One of these words being to call them a dog, but there was more than one word for dog in their language.
The word that most Jews used towards gentiles meant dog in like the wild feral dog sense. But that isn’t the word that Jesus uses here. Again, we can’t see His mannerisms, we can’t hear His tone of voice, but what we can see here is that Jesus didn’t call her this term that is usually used, this wild feral dog word, He used the word that in their language meant like, puppy, or little dog, or little house dog.
And maybe that still seems weird, and maybe at first glance it seems so harsh what Jesus says here, but I believe that Jesus has greater intentions behind His words than what we might see just quickly reading through. We’ve already read ahead; we already know Jesus is going to heal her daughter. And this is a real situation that happened, but there is also an incredible picture of prayer and our relationship with God in this passage.
Look at how this woman engages with Jesus. Again, she comes in verse 22 and calls out to Jesus. She asks Jesus to have mercy on HER and then speaks of her daughter. Obviously, this is about her daughter, but she is coming bearing the weight of the request. It’s not just words being spoken, there is weight that she is bearing and bringing before God. She said HAVE MERCY ON ME.
But she didn’t get an answer.
How many times have we called out to God, how many times have we prayed about something and not received an immediate answer? Do we just bring something up once and then like “welp I guess God’s not going to do anything about it” and give up? The Bible talks about persistence in prayer.
Psalm 40:1 says:
I waited patiently for the Lord;
And He inclined to me,
And heard my cry.
Acts 1:14a says:
These all with one mind were continually devoting themselves to prayer.
Romans 12:12 speaks of:
Rejoicing in hope, persevering in tribulation, devoted to prayer
1 Thessalonians 5:17 says:
Pray without ceasing; (DON’T STOP PRAYING)
Prayer for us is an opportunity to talk to God, it’s going to Him with our requests, it’s an opportunity to worship Him, this woman was having that same opportunity with Jesus right now. And just like sometimes happens with us, her request wasn’t answered immediately.
And then she even heard something said about things happening for other people and seemingly not for her and yet she still wasn’t discouraged. When she didn’t receive an answer, she kept calling out, even to the point of the disciples being annoyed, when she heard this other comment, she wasn’t swayed, she still approached even closer to worship and still request.
She was persistent, she was resolved, she was still in pursuit of God’s help.
She’s a good example.
And then Jesus says, “It is not good to take the children’s bread and throw it to the little dogs.” Is it in Jesus’ character to try to crush this woman’s spirit? Or is something else going on here?
We don’t know what exactly this woman thought of Jesus when He came walking into her country and she came looking for Him that day. Maybe she had heard the stories of this Guy healing and doing miraculous things and it was just a long shot with nothing else working. Maybe living so close to Israel she had heard the stories of this promised Messiah, the Savior that was coming for Israel, maybe she had heard all the stories and believed Jesus to be Him even when so many of the Jews couldn’t see it.
The reality in reading this right now is that we simply don’t know what her state of mind was. But Jesus did. Maybe Jesus saw the spark of real faith in her. Maybe all of His engagement with her, though it may seem so odd to us, was Him like fanning the spark into a fire of vibrant faith.
If He had just healed her daughter and sent her away like the disciples wanted Him to, would there have been the opportunity for her faith to grow in the same way that it is now? Was Jesus perhaps just putting these hurdles in place for her faith to jump over so that even she herself would see so much clearer the reality of the faith inside her that is now placed in Him?
I want to read a passage together in 1 Peter 1
Read 1 Peter 1:6-7
Peter talks about a joy that is there when faith is tested and found to be true and rooted in Jesus Christ. It’s almost like Jesus gives this woman a little faith obstacle course to reveal the real faith burning inside of her. Peter speaks of this faith as more precious than any gold or silver or really any other material thing at all and sometimes it takes that testing by fire to bring faith back into focus and growth.
But this woman in Matthew was pretty sharp, I kind of think she picked up on this process happening at this point and she gives Jesus a great response.
Read Matthew 15:26-27
Now that’s a great and witty response to Jesus. She recognized the different terminology that Jesus was using. She recognized that he wasn’t using the derogatory terms that His people usually used towards them. I think she recognized through the various obstacles that He presented her that He was challenging her faith. That He was confirming probably mostly for her own benefit that that faith was real.
And yet her response, though quick and witty, was still very humble. She didn’t say that they were better than that or that they deserved more or better. She basically said that well if we are these little puppies, then at least let us have the crumbs that fall off the table. And then we see Jesus’ final response to this whole interaction in verse 28.
Read Matthew 15:28
When I read this, it’s like she passed the test. Jesus says “O, WOMAN, GREAT IS YOUR FAITH!” There’s only two times that Jesus makes this statement to others and both times it was to gentiles. We saw the first time in Matthew 8 when the Roman centurion asked Jesus to heal his servant. But Jesus didn’t actually make this statement directly to Him, He was speaking to a crowd. But Jesus this time, looks right at this woman speaks of how GREAT HER FAITH IS and told her that her daughter was healed.
Most, if not all of the Jews, would have written this woman off. It sounds like His disciples even wanted to write her off too. At first glance it may have seemed like Jesus was just being harsh for no reason with this woman, but what I believe we see here is Jesus putting little obstacles out as an invitation for her to faithfully climb over them and grow.
Jesus knew her heart, but I think Jesus helped her to know what was in her own heart even better by going through this. He also helped His disciples learn a really important lesson in ministry.
Matthew was probably part of the group telling Jesus to send this woman away. But now, remember at the beginning, how he said, BEHOLD or PAY ATTENTION to what is going on here. Because there are valuable lessons to be learned.
We learn about the importance of faith and persistence in prayer. God doesn’t always answer immediately, and He doesn’t always make it easy. But He says come, and come persistently, because He is listening. And I also think this passage teaches us to not write people off so quickly. She was a gentile, her heritage said that she was an enemy of Israel, but we find out through this passage that she truly believed in Jesus and He absolutely recognized that faith, even from an enemy, a gentile, a sinner, a person very much just like us. Let’s keep faithfully bringing things before the Lord in prayer and let’s have His heart and walk in His love as we consider all of the people around us.