Reading Assignment: Matthew 15:21-39
Truth: Jesus gives opportunity for faith.
Key verse: Matthew 15:28
This passage contains two stories:
1. Canaanite woman
2. Feeding of the four thousand
Prayer Suggestion:
1. Give thanks to the Lord for giving you the opportunity to trust in Christ.
2. Pray for the same opportunity for others for whose salvation you are praying.
Transcript
Let's pray and we'll begin our time.
God, You are pure, holy, true, and faithful. There is no one like You. All our hunger for the sublime and heavenly, all our desire for that which is clean and righteous, is found in You alone. Thank You for how You reveal Yourself to us in Your word. You are the God of truth. There is in You no deception. There's no shifting shadow. We find such a great comfort and security in You. At the same time, we recognize that we are not like You. Even as our very first ancestors sinned against You, so there is sin in our hearts. But we thank You that by Your Spirit, You powerfully save us. You cleanse us and You make us anew. And You do this through Your word as Your Spirit ministers Your word to us. We pray that You would continue that work of sanctification in us as we look to Your word once again. Thank You for Your presence with us. Bless our time together. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.
The next passage to be read is Matthew 15:21-39. It's the second half of Chapter 15. The main truth that I want to highlight from this passage is that Jesus gives opportunity for faith. The key verse is found in verse 28 where Jesus affirms the faith of a Gentile woman. Jesus says to her, “O woman, your faith is great; it shall be done for you as you wish.” There are two stories that make up this section. First is the story about this Gentile woman. The second story is about the feeding of the 4000. The truth that I'm going to highlight, of course, comes from the first story. But the whole passage spans these two stories.
The first story is about the Canaanite woman. It's actually kind of an odd story. It almost seems a little out of character for Jesus to respond to the woman as He did. But when you carefully think through what's actually happening, it turns out to be not so out-of-character for Jesus. Now, before we get to its meaning, let me first tell you the story. Jesus travels up to the district of Tyre and Sidon. These were ancient cities that were famous in history a little north of the land of Israel. Jesus goes all the way up there. He intentionally goes up there. This is a little bit like how Jesus met the Samaritan woman in John Chapter 4. He went there very intentionally for her sake. And so Jesus goes to this northern district to also meet a particular person, the Canaanite woman. If you're not familiar with the term Canaanite, let me explain. It refers to the pagan people who first lived in the land of Israel, before it became their land. When the children of Israel came out of Egypt, they were led to the land that God had promised their ancestors (Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob). When they arrived, that land was occupied by the Canaanites. The name Canaanites describes the people group named after their ancestor Canaan. Relative to Jesus' time, this is all ancient history. That history goes back more than a thousand years before this time. In any case, some of the descendants of the Canaanites still lived in that part of the world and they were settled in this northern district. The story is about this Canaanite woman, a Gentile woman. She comes to Jesus. She had heard about Him and she seems to know who Jesus is, because she calls Him “the Son of David,” which is a title for the Messiah. Well, she goes to Him and begs Him for mercy saying, “Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David; my daughter is cruelly demon possessed.” Something very strange and awful had happened to her daughter. She was demon possessed. Now, here’s the odd thing. In verse 23, Matthew tells us that Jesus did not answer her a word. And so He doesn't say a thing. And instead, His disciples implored Jesus to send this woman away. They were bothered by her persistent shouting. Now Jesus speaks up at this juncture and explains why He, at least at the outset, would not minister to this woman. He says, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” Now that's true. God's general intent for Jesus was to reach the people of Israel because God had promised them the Messiah. This is the same as what we read back in Chapter 10, where Jesus sent out the disciples and He told them to go to the Jewish people. Well, here it is. Jesus tells this woman that the Father’s directive was that He go to the lost sheep of Israel. But the woman doesn't so easily give up. She bows down before Jesus and says, “Lord, help me.” Jesus then answers again and this time He says this, “It is not good to take the children's bread and throw it to the dogs.” Now, that sounds rather unkind to tell her that because she's not a Jew, that she doesn’t deserve to be given what was meant for the Jewish people. But here's her response. She says, “Yes, Lord, but even the dogs feed on the crumbs which fall from their master’s table.” What she means is this: I'll take whatever You give me, even if it's just the crumbs. It's at this point that Jesus pivots and affirms the woman's faith. He says those words I read earlier from verse 28, “O woman, your faith is great; it shall be done for you as you wish.” Then Matthew tells us that her daughter was healed at once.
So here's what's going on. Jesus intentionally goes to this Northern District. And this Canaanite woman approaches Him. Even though she was a Gentile, and even though the disciples asked the Lord to send her away, He doesn’t. It’s not that He is receiving her with open arms, either, but He provides opportunity for her to exercise faith. He lets her cry out to Him for help and express her faith. And she does. And even when He says something that was pretty off-putting, she is persistent. By the way, there is a reason why Jesus makes opportunity for this Gentile woman. God’s intent had always been to bless all the nations. God promised Abraham thousands of years prior, ”In your seed, all the nations of the earth will be blessed.” By seed, God means a particular descendant of Abraham. That language of seed in the Book of Genesis is very important because it identifies a particular human who will come from a woman's body, who will deliver God's people. But that seed of Abraham was meant to bring God’s salvation blessing to all the nations. That has always been God's intent. But the means by which God would bring the Messiah was through the people of Israel, because His promise had been given to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Therefore, there was this narrowing of focus in Jesus' ministry toward the Jewish people. Nevertheless, the heart of God has always been for the nations. It is for this reason that Jesus gives opportunity for the Roman centurion earlier in Gospel of Matthew, as well as the Samaritan woman that I mentioned earlier. Jesus does not turn them away but gives opportunity for them to place their faith in Him as the Messiah. And therefore, salvation was made available to them. What we see in this passage is this same approach. Jesus goes to this woman in the northern district, because she is a person whom God has chosen for eternal life. Therefore, Jesus goes there and gives her the opportunity to express her faith. And she does.
This is how God is: He gives opportunity for faith. This is a truth that resounds in Scripture. Think about the man, Jonah. Remember the prophet Jonah? He ran away from God when God told him to go and preach to a sinful pagan city called Nineveh. But Jonah refused and he actually went the opposite direction and headed for Tarsus, a place totally on the other side of the Mediterranean. But what does God do? He stirs up a storm and Jonah is eventually thrown overboard and he is swallowed up by a giant fish. And there in the belly of the fish, Jonah comes to his senses and he repents. This is how God works in His world, to graciously lead them to faith and repentance. The same can be said with the apostle Paul. As you would recall, he was not always the apostle Paul. He was actually once a terrorist, a Jewish terrorist targeting Christians. But of course, the Lord also gave him the opportunity to repent when Jesus appears to him. Thus God brings this man also to repentance and faith. The same goes for the Samaritan woman. This is how God is. He gives opportunity for people to repent and place their faith in Him. And this is what God has done with us. And this is what God does with those whom His people pray for. God gives opportunity for people to seek the Lord, while He may be found. This is an opportunity to give thanks to the Lord for giving us the opportunity for faith, even as Jesus had done for this Canaanite woman.
The second story is an unrelated story, but I wanted to cover this section along with this story because it's a little bit of a similar story to what we read before. Jesus feeds the four thousand. Previously, in Chapter 14, Jesus fed the five thousand. And this story is rather similar, though they're not identical. The situation is not exactly the same. As you would recall, with the feeding of the five thousand, what precipitated Jesus to go over to the remote side of the Sea of Galilee was the death of John the Baptist. Of course, that does not happen again. But in this situation, Jesus is on a mountaintop, and large crowds show up and they bring with them all sorts of sick people. They actually hiked up the mountain and Jesus cared for all of these people. He healed their sick and He ministered to them. And as we read previously with the five thousand, so Jesus here has compassion for the people. And when the day had passed, Jesus wanted to make sure that they had something to eat because He did not want them to go back down the mountain with no energy and possibly fall and hurt themselves along the way. And so He fed the crowds again. Interestingly, the disciples here don't seem to have much recollection of what had happened with the five thousand previously. This is odd and Jesus actually brings this up in Chapter 16. But they wonder as they did before where they would get food to feed this huge crowd of people. As before, they were able to gather a meager amount of food, seven loaves of bread and a few small fish. And with this meager amount, Jesus does the same as He had before. He multiplied food for the multitude and fed them all. Well, Jesus fed them, and then afterwards they went down the mountain and got into a boat and they went over to another side of the Sea of Galilee. That brings us to Chapter 16, which we'll start looking at next time.
But again, the main truth that I wanted to highlight from this passage is that Jesus gives opportunity for faith. And I know there are some of us who are praying for our loved ones, our children, perhaps colleagues at work, neighbors, relatives and even our spouses. I want you to know that we can pray knowing that the Lord is gracious to give opportunity for faith, even as He's given us opportunity to trust in Him. And that is really something amazing to thank God for. So let me close us in prayer and thank the Lord for this.
Lord, thank You that You give opportunity for faith. If You were impatient with us and did not give us the opportunity to believe, we would not be here, not like this. We would continue to live a meaningless life pursuing empty and vain things, wondering about the purpose of life and whether there is a God in heaven who cares at all. But we thank You that by Your grace, You orchestrated our lives so that we would come to hear Your word and our hearts would be humbled before You, that we would embrace Jesus Your Son as Savior and Lord. Thank You for Your Holy Spirit who has changed our hearts to trust in Jesus Christ. We pray that You would multiply this work of grace and that the people you've placed in our lives would also have the opportunity to place their faith in Christ, that You would open up their hearts to You. We humbly seek You. Thank You for ministering Your word to us. Thank You for showing us more and more about Jesus so that in seeing Jesus, we might see who You are. How generous and good You are to us! So we praise You this morning. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.
Well, that's the lesson for this morning. Lord bless you all and see you on Wednesday.