Pentecost 14

Matthew 15:21-28- Pentecost 14- September 11, 2011 

  Great Faith Holds onto Jesus Words

Jesus met a Gentile woman while traveling with His disciples in non-Jewish land.  Well, at least it was inhabited by non-Jews.  It was actually part of the land of Canaan that God had long ago promised to Abraham – to give to him and to his children as an inheritance forever (Gen. 12ff.).  Now, if the children of Israel had simply done what God had told them to do, there would not have been any Gentiles left in this land by the time Jesus walked through it.  They would have been completely driven out.  That’s what God commanded them to do.  But rather than faithfully establishing the true worship of God in all the land, instead the children of Israel disobeyed God, and inter-married with the Canaanites, and even worshipped their false gods.  Most of the Old Testament was written to respond in one way or another to this particular disobedience on the part of God’s chosen people.  Therefore, even up to the days of Jesus, the very presence of someone living in the land of Canaan who was not Jewish served as a constant reminder not only that their fathers had greatly sinned against God, but also that God’s promise to Abraham and his descendants had yet to be fully realized.  Many expectations of the long-awaited Messiah that God promised revolved around re-possessing and ruling this land, and purging it of all Gentile contamination.  

God chose Abraham by grace alone.  He could have chosen someone else.  He could have chosen among the Europeans or the Asians or Africans.  But He didn’t.  He chose Abraham, and He called him out of the land of Ur, by grace alone. 

There was nothing about Abraham that made him more worthy to be chosen than any other individual person or nation in the world.  He wasn’t more likable or electable than anyone else.  God elected Abraham, and, through the promise He made to him, worked faith in his heart, solely by grace.  And so it is with us.  We are saved by grace alone.  There is nothing about you that makes God like you more than the unbeliever.  The fact that you believe the Gospel does not indicate that there is something more worth saving and redeeming and dying for in you that is somehow lacking in others.  No.  It indicates that in His abundant mercy, God took pity on you, a sinner. 

There is absolutely nothing that we could have done or can do to affect our salvation or to make God choose us.  Our repentance, our faith, and even the good desires we have as Christians are all the gracious work of the Holy Spirit alone.  Now, to be sure He accomplishes these works in us, but it is His work nonetheless, not ours – as Paul says in Philippians 1, regarding the whole life of the Christian, “He who has begun this good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ.”  It is God’s boundless love alone that compels Him to call us sinners out of darkness and into His marvelous light.  We call this grace alone.  What great love this must be! 

And it is great indeed!  God’s election by grace alone finds its source in God’s love for the whole world of sinners.  We call this universal grace.  “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son …” (Jn. 3).  “God desires all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth” (1 Tim. 2).  “‘As I live,’ says the Lord GOD, ‘I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live” (Ez. 33).  God’s great love extends to every man, woman and child who ever lived and who ever will live.  This is what Scripture clearly teaches.  This is the boundless love to which all the prophets bear witness.  This is God’s universal grace that excludes no sinner no matter what sin he or she has committed. 

But there seems to be a contradiction here.  At least there sure seems to be a conflict between the doctrine of grace alone, and the doctrine of universal grace.  If sinners can only be saved by God’s grace alone, and, at the same time, God desires to be gracious toward all sinners, why aren’t all sinners saved?  This question is unanswerable.  Although Scripture teaches both doctrines, Scripture does not resolve the apparent conflict.  God’s thoughts are simply too high for us.  “How unsearchable are His judgments and His ways past finding out!” 

Of all problems that theologians have had to address through the millennia, this has by far been the most difficult.  It is a burden for all of us to have to silence the rational objections of the mind and simply to heed His word while adoring the mystery.  In fact it is such a burden that it has been called the crux theologorum, the theologian’s cross, because this seeming contradiction is a cross that every theologian must bear.  But it is not the theologian’s task to figure it out, because it is not the task of faith to figure this out.  Faith does not search inside oneself for the reason why God has chosen me.  And faith does not attempt to search what is hidden in God for the reason why He has not chosen another.  No.  Instead, FAITH LAYS HOLD ON THE WORDS OF JESUS.  And that settles it.  FAITH LAYS HOLD ON THE WORDS OF JESUS, and doesn’t let go.  This is the mark of a good theologian. 

Consider the woman in our Gospel reading this morning.  She was a Gentile.  But what a fantastic theologian she was.  Listen to those first words that she cried: “Have mercy on me, O Lord, Son of David!  My daughter is severely demon-possessed.”  What a great theological treatise!  Let’s break it down: 

First, she cries, “Have mercy.”  Eleison, in Greek, which is where we get Kyrie eleison, Lord have mercy.  This woman had heard the report of Jesus.  She knew that He was merciful.  She approached Him with boldness, in the confidence that Jesus would not turn her away.  She depended on His universal grace that could not possibly exclude her.  She was right. 

Next, she calls Him Lord, kyrie.  With this single word, she confessed Jesus to be the Son of God.  She wasn’t simply using a polite or lofty title.  She was confessing that Jesus is the very LORD God of Israel who promised the land in which she lived to Abraham and to his descendants forever.  Think of that!  By confessing Jesus as Lord, she was confessing that she herself had no right to be where she was.  She was a trespasser, a Gentile, pleading the mercy of a God whose grace she had right to claim. 

Next, she calls Jesus the Son of David.  By calling Him the Son of David, she was confessing that He was the Messiah, the hope of all Israel and indeed all the world, who was to sit on the throne of David forever and who would gather all nations to Himself.  She was confessing Him as the Christ of whose righteous life and substitutionary death David had so clearly described in the Psalms, and of whom all the prophets had given faithful witness. 

Finally, she gave her reason for crying out for mercy.  Her daughter was severely demon-possessed.  With such a petition, she confessed that Jesus was willing and able to destroy the works of the devil and save her daughter.  And with that, she confessed that He had power over all her own spiritual enemies as well.  What a brilliant theologian.  And she wasn’t even a member of the church!  She rightly confessed four great truths: 1) Jesus is Lord, 2) Jesus is Christ, 3) Jesus has power over the devil, and 4) Jesus is merciful.  Such an amazing and thorough confession!  … And Jesus ignored it.  He just didn’t even respond. 

What a seeming contradiction.  That Jesus whom she knows to be merciful and gracious would simply ignore her; that He whose answer is always “yes” should say to her, “no.”  But Jesus did not say no.  It only looked that way – just another seeming contradiction. 

While looks may deceive the eyes, looks could not deceive her faith.  Because, instead of trying to figure this puzzle out, this woman simply held to the gracious promise of God.  She was persistent – so persistent in fact that even the disciples interceded for her, asking Jesus to grant her request even just to get her to stop making such a spectacle of herself.   But Jesus simply responded: “I was not sent except to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”  What a heavy blow! 

It seems as though Jesus is denying His universal grace toward all sinners by appealing to God’s specific election of Israel by grace alone.  It seems like He’s pitting the two doctrines against each other.  But Jesus did no such thing.  Jesus denied nothing.  He didn’t say no.  He simply stated what was true.  He was sent to live and to die as a Jew in order to redeem God’s chosen nation. 

It’s like what Jesus told the Samaritan woman at the well in John 4: “You worship what you do not know; we know what we worship, for salvation is of the Jews.” That is to say, salvation is found in the promised Seed of Abraham alone.  Jesus was right.  Salvation was of the Jews, because it was to them that salvation was promised.  And Jesus was sent to the lost sheep of Israel.  He was, as we sing, the Glory of God’s people Israel.  And as such, He was a Light to lighten the Gentiles. 

This Gentile woman knew this.  That’s why she came to Jesus.  And she certainly knew who it was that she worshipped.  That’s why she asked Jesus to help her.  “Then she came and worshiped Him, saying, ‘Lord, help me!’  But He answered and said, ‘It is not good to take the children’s bread and throw it to the little dogs.’”  How far could Jesus test her faith?  He simply ignored her; He seemed to exclude her; and now He straight up insults her.  How far could Jesus test her faith?  But with these words Jesus not only tested her faith, but He gave her the very words her faith needed to cling to.  And by faith she did just that.  She held Jesus to the very words that seemed to refuse her.  “Yes, Lord, yet even the little dogs eat the crumbs which fall from their masters’ table.” 

She knew that she did not deserve to be called a child of God.  She was a Gentile sinner.  She knew she was not worthy to be heard, not worthy to be received, not worthy for Jesus to give her what she needed so badly.  But if she had to become a little dog in order to receive what Jesus had to offer, then so be it: she would catch Jesus in His own words!  “So I am a dog.  Let me be a dog.  Let me be she who has no right to sit at your table.  But, Lord, for the sake of your boundless mercy, You cannot refuse me when I claim for myself the crumbs that fall to your feet.” 

Such great faith!  And she wasn’t even a member of the Church – a Gentile – the very obstacle that prevented the Jews from inheriting the land that had been promised them.   But this woman saw in herself an even greater obstacle.  She saw her sin – that which prevented her from inheriting eternal life in heaven.  And that is why she clung by faith so tenaciously to every word that Jesus spoke.  Her FAITH LAID HOLD ON THE WORDS OF JESUS.  That’s what faith does.  And in so doing, her theology was perfected. 

You might not think that you are the best theologian – or that you even need to be.  You might be overwhelmed by what seems to be a bunch of fine theological distinctions that seem to have no bearing on your everyday life of faith.  But when you need God to have mercy on you, it is then that you learn the truest and purest, and the simplest theology. 

When you see in yourself no good deed or habit, no virtue that would compel God to choose you as anyone special; when you see your life riddled with problems that you can’t seem to bring under control; when you see that your own sin has rendered you unworthy to even ask God for mercy and help; when you have learned to identify yourself as a sinner, a little dog, then it is that God makes you a real theologian.  And so you learn to identify Jesus clearly as your God who has mercy on sinners.  You learn to confess Him as Christ who makes promises to you in Scripture.  You learn to look to where your God and Savior hung high and nailed to a cross in order to bear all your sin away.  You learn to hear His word of forgiveness, His promise that His righteousness is yours, His pledge to be with you and never to leave you, and to give you the eternal life He secured for you in His Resurrection from the dead.  And most importantly, you learn a lesson from this Gentile woman and catch Jesus in His own words when He calls Himself the friend of sinners.  “Then let me be a sinner,” we say.  “Let me deserve nothing.  But Lord Jesus, for the sake of your holy, innocent, bitter suffering and death, You cannot refuse me when I claim for myself the crumbs of mercy that You have shed Your blood to win for sinners.” 

 “Then Jesus answered and said to her, ‘O woman, great is your faith! Let it be to you as you desire.’  And her daughter was healed from that very hour.”  Great faith is FAITH that LAYS HOLD ON THE WORDS OF JESUS.  It is faith that catches Jesus in His own words and does not let go of what He has promised no matter how much it may appear that these promises are not for you – because they are. 

Though it may seem He hears thee not,
Count not thyself forsaken;
Thy wants are ne'er by Him forgot,
Let this thy hope awaken;
His word is sure, here is thy stay,
Though doubts may plague thee on thy way,
Let not thy faith be shaken.

The woman in our text got more than crumbs.  She got the whole banquet.  She is more than a little dog; she is a child of God and our sister in Christ who even now sits with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob at the feast of salvation.  You too receive more than crumbs.  You are not just a lowly sinner; you are God’s own dear child.  And as such, you receive everything that God has promised in His faithful word: peace with God, eternal life and salvation, all because your sins are forgiven you.  Believe it.  Demand it.  And let it be to you as you desire. 

In Jesus’ name, Amen.