Photo credit: James Barker on Unsplash
Introduction
I think today it is best just to dive straight into our passage of Scripture, so we’re in Matthew’s Gospel, chapter 15, beginning at v21.
Then Jesus left Galilee and went north to
the region of Tyre and Sidon. A Gentile woman who lived there came to him,
pleading, “Have mercy on me, O Lord, Son of David! For my daughter is possessed by a demon that
torments her severely.” But Jesus gave her no reply, not even a word. Then his disciples urged him to send her away.
“Tell her to go away,” they said. “She is bothering us with all her begging.”
Then Jesus said to the woman, “I was sent
only to help God’s lost sheep—the people of Israel.” But she came and worshiped him, pleading again,
“Lord, help me!” Jesus responded, “It isn’t right to take food from
the children and throw it to the dogs.” She replied, “That’s true, Lord, but even dogs are
allowed to eat the scraps that fall beneath their masters’ table.” “Dear woman,” Jesus said to her, “your faith is
great. Your request is granted.”
And her daughter was instantly healed.
Jesus returned to the Sea of Galilee and climbed a hill and sat down. A vast crowd brought to him people who were lame, blind, crippled, those who couldn’t speak, and many others. They laid them before Jesus, and he healed them all. The crowd was amazed! Those who hadn’t been able to speak were talking, the crippled were made well, the lame were walking, and the blind could see again! And they praised the God of Israel.
Then Jesus called his disciples and told
them, “I feel sorry for these people. They have been here with me for three
days, and they have nothing left to eat. I don’t want to send them away hungry,
or they will faint along the way.” The disciples replied, “Where would we get
enough food here in the wilderness for such a huge crowd?” Jesus asked, “How
much bread do you have?” They replied, “Seven loaves, and a few small fish.” So
Jesus told all the people to sit down on the ground.
Then he took the seven loaves and the fish, thanked God for them, and broke them into pieces. He gave them to the disciples, who distributed the food to the crowd. They all ate as much as they wanted. Afterward, the disciples picked up seven large baskets of leftover food. There were 4,000 men who were fed that day, in addition to all the women and children. Then Jesus sent the people home, and he got into a boat and crossed over to the region of Magadan.
So many questions, so little time! Among the things we may be wondering are these:
1. Why is Jesus in Tyre and Sidon, a pagan and
godless territory?
2. Who is this Canaanite, Gentile woman he meets?
3. Why does Jesus ignore her?
4. Why is he then so harsh, and even rude to her,
essentially likening her to a dog?
5. This feeding of the 4,000 – haven’t we seen
this film before, only bigger and better? What’s the point of this slightly
less impressive sequel?
I will attempt to address all these questions,
hopefully in a way that both satisfies our curiosity and - more importantly - increases our love for
the Lord.
Background
We begin in v21 with Jesus leaving Galilee and heading
north to the region of Tyre and Sidon.
This actually opens a whole section of
Matthew’s Gospel where Jesus intentionally moves away from the overwhelmingly
Jewish area of the western shores of the Sea of Galilee.
As we saw last week, Jesus has just clashed with
the Pharisees over what constitutes uncleanness, where Jesus abolishes the distinction between
clean and unclean food, deeply offending and alienating the religious
traditionalists as he does so.
Now, for the rest of chapter 15 and most of
chapter 16, he travels to “unclean” Gentile places. And he is going to begin demolishing the dividing
wall between Jew and Gentile.
Tyre and Sidon are twin towns about 30 miles to
the north of Galilee, in what is now Lebanon. Actually, this territory was given by God to
Israel at the time of Joshua. It was included in the Promised Land, but the
tribe of Asher, through its lack of faith, failed to subdue the Canaanites, and
so it remained in the possession of peoples deeply hostile to the God of Israel. Tyre itself was a busy port and its prosperity
fuelled a culture of sinful excess.
Ezekiel 28 says about this city: “In much buying and selling you became violent... Your beauty went to your head... Your heart is arrogant, going around saying, 'I’m a god. I sit on the throne of a god in the heart of the seas' …. because of your great wealth your heart has grown proud...”
Wicked queen Jezebel in the Old Testament was from
here. She turned the heart of king Ahab and his people
away from the living God. She defiled Israel with false religion and tacky
idols and shrine prostitution and child sacrifice. She presided over a reign of terror, persecuting
the Lord’s prophets and putting them to the sword.
So what on earth are Jesus and his disciples doing hanging out in a place like this? Basically, it’s because they desperately need to lie low. Everywhere Jesus now goes in Jewish territory, he’s in big trouble.
His own family is upset with him (chapter 12). His own hometown has rejected him (chapter 13). Herod has just executed his close cousin (chapter 14). And as we saw last Sunday, (chapter 15), the religious top brass are confronting him - and everything he says is like poking a bear. Jesus is starting to arouse serious opposition.
He is taking the entire elaborate system of
man-made religion, with all its grubby vested interests, and he is
unceremoniously dismantling it. He’s becoming, for the religious authorities,
public enemy number one.
That's why it says in Mark’s account of this story, “Jesus entered a house in the vicinity of Tyre and did not want anyone to know it.” He needs to get away from the polarised, toxic atmosphere of home. Hopefully, by the time he returns, it will have calmed down.
1. The Syro-Phoenician Woman
So Jesus and his disciples are facing increasing
hostility, and they have been at it non-stop. Every day, every hour, someone turns up with a
pressing need. “Fix this, mend that, help my child, feed this
crowd, heal my wife.
On top of that, they’ve walked all day, in the
heat, on a dusty road. But even here, miles from home, such is his fame
and reputation, Jesus cannot keep his whereabouts secret. As soon as she hears that Jesus is nearby, a needy
woman with a very troubled daughter finds him, falls at his feet, and pleads, and begs, and implores him to get up,
put his sandals and coat back on, and go with her, and sort it all out.
Verse 22 says her little girl is “suffering terribly.” Though the girl’s condition is not described, it does say here that she is “tormented severely” and so I think it likely that her suffering would probably resemble the condition of the young boy we will encounter in chapter 17. It says of him that whenever an evil spirit seizes him, he suddenly screams; it throws him into convulsions so that he becomes rigid, grinding his teeth, rolling around and foaming at the mouth.
Is there any greater emotional pain than watching
children suffer and being powerless to help?
I remember my kids coming home with tears running
down their sweet faces because they were being bullied at school. It broke my heart. It gave me sleepless nights. We agonised in prayer about it. We would do anything to make it right for them.
This little girl is deeply troubled, she is oppressed and afflicted - and her desperate mother cannot fix it, nothing works. So, (v22) when somehow informed that Jesus is near, she finds him and abruptly disturbs his rest and begs him to help. And, bewilderingly, Jesus says nothing to her at all. He responds by ignoring her. What is going on?
This is not the Jesus we know, brimming over with
compassion for the multitudes! It seems to contradict everything else we read
about Jesus in the four Gospels.
Have you ever prayed, and prayed about something
that is very important to you only to be met with a stony silence from heaven? Have you ever felt that in answer to your best
prayers God just seems asleep? Have you ever felt like giving up bothering to
pray because it all feels so useless and ineffective? But she does not give up.
Her persistence is so unrelenting that the disciples finally snap and say, v23, “Tell her to go away. She is bothering us with all her begging.” All… her… begging. This is not a brief, half-hearted, apologetic and timid whimper for help. No! This is an emotional, insistent, repetitive appeal from a woman so desperate that she refuses to stop.
Jesus then replies, again apparently somewhat
coldly, that he is sent only to the lost sheep of Israel. I think what he means by that is that this
excursion is intended as a fleeting visit to that region; he is not mandated to set up a mission outpost up
here with no one to lead it when he moves on. But still, she will not be denied.
He’s already healed a Gentile centurion’s servant
in chapter 8. And Jesus commended him for having more faith than
God’s chosen people. Whether she is emboldened by knowing about this or
not, she pleads again and again, “Lord, help… me” she says.
Like in Genesis 32 when Jacob wrestles with an angel, she says, in effect, “I will not let you go until you bless me!”
Do you remember Jesus telling a parable about a
persistent widow, with the express purpose, it says, of teaching us to pray and
not give up? This is the territory we find ourselves in here.
But Jesus then takes our breath away, with one of
the most shocking and baffling sayings in the whole New Testament. If this story were not recorded in the Gospels, we
would never credit it as being genuine. We would never accept, I don’t think, that these
words actually came from Jesus’ lips. Does his reply to her not make you squirm a little
uncomfortably in your chair?
We don’t mind Jesus tearing into the pompous, self-righteous Pharisees. We quite like it when Jesus sticks it to The Man. But this? Who would believe that Jesus could be politically incorrect? Imagine how cancelled he would be in 2024!
And yet, it’s not a mistake, it’s not a misprint.
Mark records exactly the same thing. Jesus really does say in v26, “It isn’t right to
take food from the children and throw it to the dogs.” I’ve looked that up in all the Bible versions on
my shelf. ESV, NRSV, KJV, NLT, NIV, Good News Bible… Even in
The Message paraphrase it comes out pretty well the same.
We like dogs. We call them “man’s best friend.” We throw them sticks to fetch and we pat them on
the head. We put videos of them on Facebook. Our public parks are full of happy dogs and doting
owners.
But in the Middle East, in Jesus’ day, when Jews
spoke of Gentiles as dogs, it was a reference to the fact that they were
considered morally unclean and spiritually unqualified. And though Jesus softens the insult somewhat by
using a word that people would reserve for a family pet, rather than a stray
roaming the dirty streets, it still comes across as harsh, even rude.
But it’s nothing personal. Measured against the holiness of God, it’s just
the uncomfortable truth about the godless community this woman belonged to.
They were estranged from God. They were entrenched in their idolatries and superstitions. They wore their hatred of God’s people as a badge of honour. They were cut off from God’s promises and didn’t care. Arrogance and self-sufficiency and vanity, as we’ve seen, were what the city of Tyre was famous for.
This is the uncomfortable truth about all of us
too. We are, says Paul, Ephesians 2.3, by nature
objects of wrath, fully deserving of it. Our natural state, every one of us, is one of
deep-rooted rebellion against God, preferring our ways to his. The Bible says that even our righteous acts, our
best efforts, are as filthy rags.
Spiritually, before God, we’re not good people or
even bad people. We are dead people, without God, without hope,
eternally lost, with no innate moral goodness to commend us, utterly dead in
our sins; we need a miracle. Every area of our fallen lives, without exception,
needs a touch of God’s saving grace. We are unable to choose by ourselves to respond to
God, or to be remotely interested in being saved from
our addiction to sin, We need God, in his mercy, to open our eyes and
draw us to him.
But if Jesus’ words here take us aback, this
woman’s witty and spirited reply is equally startling. And Matthew presents it to us as a compelling
illustration of beautiful and tenacious faith. This is the kind of faith God wants you and me to
have and display. She does not appear, you will notice, in the least
insulted. There is no trace of her taking offence. No hint of complaint. She doesn’t say, “How dare you talk to me like
that! Who do you think you are?”
The magnificence of her faith is shown not only by
the fact that she refuses to go home empty handed, but also because she totally accepts Jesus’
verdict on her godless, pagan background as correct. She gets it!
To Jesus' shocking comment about dogs, she replies, “That’s true, Lord,” In other words, “Yes, exactly! 100%. I am unclean, undeserving and unqualified. I have, by my own merits, no place at your table.” And yet, she perceives in the words of the Puritan
preacher, Richard Sibbes, that there is more mercy in Christ than there is sin
in us.
There’s an old Anglican prayer that they use
before Holy Communion inspired by this story. Some of you will know it. “We do not presume to come to this your table,
merciful Lord, trusting in our own righteousness, but in your manifold and
great mercies. We are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under your
table. But you are the same Lord whose nature is always to have mercy.”
She could have written that herself. She is asking for a single cure for her daughter;
one crumb! It doesn’t need to be a complete loaf, or even
whole a slice, let alone a full meal. “Lord, I’ll take the scraps. Just one crumb from your table of grace is all I
need.” What amazing faith!
So amazing, that Jesus says, “For such a reply,
you may go; the demon has left your daughter.” And the Bible says, “she went home and found her
daughter relaxed on the bed, the torment gone for good.” The beautiful thing is that, though all of us are
undeserving even of crumbs, if we will come to Christ in humility and
brokenness, believing that his mercy is greater than our sin, we all get top seats, places of honour, at his
banqueting table!
Praise God for his amazing grace!
2. Many People Healed and Fed
The feeding of the 4,000, at the end of chapter 15, unlike the feeding of the 5,000 a chapter earlier, takes place on the eastern shore of the Sea of Galilee, the Decapolis, which is Greek-influenced Gentile territory. We know it took place there, because v39 tells us that following this miracle, Jesus crosses over to the region of Magadan, which is on the western shore, the Jewish side. So this is a completely different crowd to the 5,000, and in a very different location.
The last time Jesus was here was at the end of
chapter 8, when he drove demons out of a wild, self-harming
man called Legion and the evil spirit sent a panicked herd of pigs into the sea. You only get pigs on Gentile land for obvious
reasons.
According to Luke, Jesus then said to him, “Stay here and tell everyone what God has done for you.” And that is what he did. Because when Jesus returns here some months later, v33 says there’s a crowd. The man formerly known as Legion has been sharing his testimony and has been very effective. In fact, 4,000 people, over a period of 3 days, come to Jesus for healing and to listen to what he has to say!
And yet, be honest, don’t you find it a bit underwhelming that Jesus feeds 5,000 with five loaves and two fish, leaving 12 baskets of leftovers in chapter 14, but then feeds a smaller crowd, with more food, and with fewer baskets of leftovers, one chapter later?
It feels a bit like Jesus’ slightly disappointing second album. But in fact, it’s more like Jesus' poignant sequel to a blockbuster film. Like what comes before with the Canaanite woman, this story is making a vital point about faith. After commending the woman from godless Tyre for her great faith, Jesus cannot but be dismayed at the chronic lack of faith in his own disciples.
The twelve have witnessed Jesus, not that long ago, feeding to satisfaction a more substantial crowd, with baskets left over. They cannot deny it. The bread and fish passed through their own hands. And yet, gormlessly and faithlessly, they ask each other, apparently at a complete loss, in v33, “Where would we get enough food here in the wilderness for such a huge crowd?”
It’s as if the feeding of the 5,000 never happened. No wonder Jesus is so often exasperated by the dullness and unbelief of his disciples; they’re pathetic. He would almost be better off with a dozen scarecrows off eBay.
Here's the lesson: when you forget the great
things the Lord has done in your life, like they did,
you end up crippled by chronic doubt and spiritual
impotence, like they did.
People of God, we must make a habit, a determined
lifestyle choice, of remembering and savouring and retelling the mighty works
of God in our lives.
And be encouraged. Though they were chronically unbelieving, Jesus chose them and appointed them for fruitfulness, and he never gave up on them. However fragile your faith is today, if you’re a Christian, the Lord has chosen you to belong to him and he will stay faithful to the end.
Ending
As I close, I want to share an anecdote told by Kenneth E. Bailey, a pastor who has spent most of his life in the Middle East.
As a Christian feast day was approaching, some time in 2003, a Christian woman from a high-class family invited some of her non-Christian neighbours to help her prepare a large pot of rice for distribution to the poor, as was the custom. The women cooked this rice together but before they carried the pot into the street, the Christian host insisted on praying over the rice in the name of Jesus, asking him to bless it, that it would be sufficient for the poor coming to receive this gift of food. She didn’t want anyone to leave hungry.
After her prayer, they all carried this very large pot of rice into the narrow street, placed it on a table, and began serving it to those who gathered. The woman of the house then returned to her kitchen to supervise the clean-up. Not being Christians, the other women handing out the rice had never heard the Gospel stories of the feeding of the multitudes. But after a while, one of the women ran into the kitchen, and with her eyes wide open said, “What is happening? We have been distributing this rice in large bowlfuls for some time and the level of the rice in the pot has not gone down!”
Some people say that the day of miracles is past. Don’t listen to them.
In reality, there has never been a ‘day of
miracles’, some long lost golden age. There’s no “day of miracles”, there's only a God
of miracles and he… never… changes. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and
forever.
Let’s stand to pray…
Sermon preached at King's Church Darlington, 14 July 2024.
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