Lent 2

Matthew 15:21-28 - Reminiscere, Lent II - February 24, 2013 

Wrestling with God

Our Introit this morning comes from Psalm 25 and begins by asking God to remember His tender mercies and lovingkindnesses, for they are from of old.  That is to say that they are from a long time ago.  That’s why, I suppose, the Psalmist, who is King David here, asks God to remember them.  It’s not like God forgets.  He doesn’t.  We do.  We take them for granted.  We take advantage of our freedom under God’s grace.  We cave into fleshly lusts of various stripes, and so we forget who we are as children of God, redeemed by the blood of Christ.  We ignore God’s word to our peril, and so forget who God is as our merciful Father, reconciled by the propitiating sacrifice of His Son.  And as often as we in our sinful weakness forget, we ask God to remember.  We cry to God for mercy.  And this is what it means to be saved by grace through faith.  It means that God continue to recall and apply His promises of old.  And we continue to ask Him to.  We don’t ask for something new when we cry for mercy.  We ask for something old.  We ask for the same thing.  We ask that God once again, as He has already done so many countless times, open up and reveal His heart to us sinners, so that we might again know and believe His love for us.  And God remembers. 

I remember learning the German word for “remember.”  I’ll spare you the pronunciation of the word with its guttural R’s, but it’s a really neat word.  It literally means to bring something deep within yourself so as to be able to retrieve it at will.   It’s a helpful picture of what it means to remember. 

But when we ask God to remember something, we’re not asking Him to recall something that He forgot, or that He had to commit to memory one time like a confirmation student.  No, we’re asking Him to bring to expression the love that is and has been in the heart of the Father from all eternity.  He remembers it, because it is already so deep within Him that it is in fact His very essence.  He knows it by heart, so to speak, because it has been on His mind since before time.  It is the love of Christ the eternal Son of God who reveals the Father’s heart to us poor sinners.  His mercies are sure; His lovingkindnesses never fail.  Remember these, O Lord, we pray.  And this is to say, Give us the gospel.  Give us Jesus. 

Because when we pray for mercy, we’re not just asking God to find it within Himself to forgive us – like: Somewhere in that big heart of Yours, You will surely have regard for me and my piddly affairs.  No.  We are praying always for the sake of the specific love that God has long ago revealed.  In the Old Testament, He revealed this love in the promises that He made to send His Son.  The second Person of the Holy Trinity would take on our very nature so as to redeem us from sin, death, and the power of the devil.  The Son of God would become the Son of David.  He would keep His promise.  He would rule His Kingdom of heaven here on earth by forgiving sins.  On Calvary, the long-expected King of the Jews established His Kingdom over all nations by ascending the throne of His cross.  There He earned the right to rule us by grace.  

Telling God to recall His mercy and be gracious to us does not require any worthiness in us.  It does not require that some condition be met within our own heart.  It requires that a condition be met within God’s heart.  God is the one we’re asking to remember.  And the condition within the Father’s heart was met when the one in whom His heart delighted bore our sin and shed His blood.  Jesus earned God’s blessing.  He lived the perfect life that we did not.  Temptation?  He resisted; and then He gave all glory to God when He did.  Vengeance?  Oh, He knew sin when He saw it.  And He knew what it deserved.  But He committed to His Father alone all power to execute justice.  And His Father executed justice by demanding His pain and death.  This was in order to reconcile Himself to us sinners who at our very best take the credit for resisting the few temptations we do. 

But when we cry to God for mercy, we dare not claim any merit or worthiness like that,  any achievement or improvement that we are proud of.  No.  We must pray God to recall that which happened in time far out of our control or input.  We pray to God to bless us on account of the fact that He cursed His own Son in our place. 

Consider Jacob.  What claim could he have made?  Recall the context of our Old Testament lesson.  Jacob had stolen, with his mother’s manipulative help, the birthright blessing from his eldest brother Esau.  The birthright blessing rightfully belonged to Esau.  He was born first.  The blessing entailed two things: 1^st, it meant you would inherit all animals and land and wealth.  This is what Esau wanted.   And 2^nd, it meant that through your line the promised Messiah would come.  This is what Jacob wanted.  Esau was coming for Jacob to claim what was his.  In his distress, Jacob waited and slept a restless night.  He wrestled with God that night.  Not for land or animals or anything that he might have needed to feed his large family.  No he wrestled with God in order to procure the blessing of mercy that he did not deserve. 

He didn’t deserve it.  But he didn’t let go of it on that account.  He held onto his mighty contender even though his hip was dislodged from its joint.  In pain and weakness and defeat, he kept wrestling.  He wouldn’t let go until God blessed him.  And God did.  He gave him a name that we all know well.  Jacob became Israel, for he strove with God and with men and prevailed.  God blessed him.  God remembered the promise that He had made to Abraham and to Isaac.  And so by grace, likewise, He blessed Jacob as well. 

Jacob’s faith didn’t earn a thing.  Rather it acknowledged its poverty and demanded God’s wealth.  That’s what faith does.  Nowhere is this noble activity of faith more clearly seen than in prayer, when we request, and even demand, from God what we do not deserve. 

Consider now the Canaanite woman whose daughter was severely demon-possessed.  She had even less claim on God’s mercy than Jacob.  She was a Gentile from the pagan land of Tyre and Sidon where devils were worshiped as gods.  Her fathers didn’t wrestle with the Lord.  Her fathers rejected Him.  And yet, this woman saw in Christ the Father’s heart open wide.  She saw Him who could help – who had power over her greatest enemy – not a jealous brother seeking his birthright, but the devil who had claimed her daughter.  And so she prayed. 

People often complain that folks don’t pray when things are going well, but only when things are going poorly.  I suppose this convicts us all – not just the Canaanite woman.  We should pray at all times.  But we don’t.  And yet certainly praying when things are going badly is better than not praying at all.  In fact, this is how God often prompts us to pray.  He doesn’t lead us into trouble.  But He does allow trouble to follow us in order that we might be driven to His promises. 

God allows His angels to permit a breach in their guard so that the devil can slip in and cause harm.  But God does not allow the devil to do harm that cannot be mended.  Precisely not!  He only allows the devil to do enough that will bring to light our truest need.  We need God to have mercy on us poor miserable sinners. 

Incline your ear, and come to Me.
Hear, and your soul shall live;
And I will make an everlasting covenant with you—
The sure mercies of David. (Isaiah 55:3)

And so this desperate mother inclined her ear to Jesus even as she cried out to Him for mercy.  She called on Him to remember the unmerited promises He had once made to His own people Israel: “Have mercy on me, O Lord, Son of David.” 

But He ignored her.  That’s what it looked like.   What a blow.  So it is often for us.  It’s hard enough contending with all the problems in life – all the things we pray about.  It’s enough of a struggle to wrestle these things down to the ground and manage them.  But in God’s silence – as though He doesn’t even hear us – He sets Himself up as our greatest opponent – our greatest contender to wrestle with. 

I’ve got to quote the hymn now, because there’s a reason I chose it as an insert.  It addresses this dilemma very well; and it encourages us. 

Learn to mark God’s wondrous dealing
With the people that He loves;
When His chast’ning hand they're feeling,
Then their faith the strongest proves.
God is nigh, and notes their tears,
Though He answers not, He hears;
Pray with faith, for though He try you,
No good thing can God deny you.

This woman’s faith proved strongest in her rejection – if in nothing else than that she didn’t stop praying.  Knowing that Jesus could not deny her in the end, she cried out all the more – so much that the disciples asked Jesus to do something good for her just to shut her up.  But here an even harsher blow is dealt.  Denial.  The promise is not for you.  That’s what it sounds like.  But of course this wasn’t the case. 

Now, what Jesus said is true.  Jesus was sent to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.  This was how and where He would fulfill His mission to save all nations.  He was not sent to the Greeks or the Romans or the Persians or Germans.  He wasn’t.  He was sent to the Jews.  But by being sent TO the Jews, He was sent FOR all nations. 

When our prayers remain unanswered – though we pray and pray and pray, when we wrestle with God and then find ourselves injured by His silence and seeming denial, then the devil tempts us to believe that perhaps God’s promise is not for us.  We think that His silence and inactivity is a sign of His denial.  Jesus is for the more holy.  He is for the more faithful.  He is for those who don’t fall into temptation quite so much.  He is for those who pray more often.  But what a lie.  If Jesus is sent to Israel, then He is sent to the man in our Old Testament lesson who wrestled with God Himself and would not let go.  If Jesus is sent to Israel, then He is sent to King David who seduced Bathsheba and killed her husband.  If Jesus is sent only to lost sheep, then come to grips, dear Christians, with how lost you are without Him.  Jesus is sent to sinners.  So fall down on your knees with this frantic woman and ask for help. 

Pray with faith, for though He try you,
No good thing can God deny you.

But then it seems like Jesus does: “It is not right to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.”   But if this is still a wrestling match, in this fatal maneuver Jesus opened His own breach to the wrangling determination of a desperate woman in prayer.  With Jesus’ own words, she pinned Him to the ground.  “If I must be a dog, so be it.  You are correct to say that it is not right to throw Your bread of mercy to me.  I don’t deserve it.  But I’m not claiming my own merit here, am I? I’m claiming Your mercy.  And if I have to snatch up what those more worthy than I have let fall to the ground, so be it.  That’s what I came here for.”  If this is a wrestling match, this woman won. 

She won because she claimed the words of Jesus.  That's how prayer wins.  That’s how prayer finds its focus and God’s open ear.  We don’t cash in favors when we pray.  We beg for what God does not owe.  In fact we beg for what we do owe and can never pay back.  We beg for God to do good to us.  This woman prayed that Jesus would do good to her – by doing good to Israel.  That’s how it works. 

There would have been no crumbs if it were not for the bread given to the children.  And so there is no hope for God to have mercy on us as individuals apart from where God blesses and nourishes His whole Church.  We don’t ask God for special favors.  This woman didn’t.  We only ask that we might benefit from the mercy shown where God calls, gathers, enlightens, and sanctifies His whole Christian Church on earth, and keeps it with Jesus Christ in the one true faith.  In this Church God daily and richly forgives all sins.  And so that’s where we go.  We go to where crumbs are falling to the ground.  We go to where God is willing to engage us in our struggles with sin and doubt by speaking His word – by reproving, admonishing, exposing, condemning, and forgiving us.  We go to where Jesus remembers His ancient struggle with Israel so that He will not forget to bless us as well. 

“‘O woman, great is your faith! Be it done for you as you desire.’ And her daughter was healed instantly.”  Jesus never intended not to save her little girl.  But Jesus wrestled with her so that she and we might know who our true enemies are – so that we might look to where Christ wrestled and defeated all powers of darkness in our place.  There He focuses our faith.  There is what makes faith great.  Great faith is faith that remembers what God sometimes seems to forget.  Great faith remembers the sure mercies of David as revealed on the cross where David’s Son and David’s Lord crushed the devil’s head. 

We forget.  God does not.  We remember the sins of our youth – the sins that our flesh has grown so accustomed to.  We return to them like dogs return to their vomit.  And so as dogs, we return to Jesus.  We beg Him not to remember the sins of our youth or put us to shame, but to remember instead His tender mercies and lovingkindnesses of old.  And He does.  It may seem He doesn’t.  But that is only so that we might remember all the more.  God is faithful.  He remembers and beholds forever that which we also place before our own eyes.  If He did not spare His own Son, how will He deny you anything you pray for?    

In Jesus’ name, Amen.