August 16, 2026 | What Makes Faith Great?

This is the holy gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ according to Matthew.

Glory to you, Lord Christ.

And Jesus went away from there and withdrew to the district of Tyre and Sidon.

And behold, a Canaanite woman from that region came out and was crying, Have mercy on me, O Lord, son of David.

My daughter is severely oppressed by a demon.

But he did not answer her a word.

And his disciples came and begged him, saying, Send her away, for she is crying out after us.

He answered, I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.

But she came and knelt before him, saying, Lord, help me.

And he answered, It is not right to take the children's bread and throw it to the dogs.

She said, Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master's table.

Then Jesus answered her, O woman, great is your faith.

Be it done for you as you desire.

And her daughter was healed instantly.

The Gospel of the Lord.

Praise to you, Lord Christ.

Let's pray.

Father, we thank you for the gift of your Son Jesus Christ, who is with us here today.

And we thank you, Holy Spirit, for bringing the words of Jesus to life in our hearts, in our minds.

That your word would bear fruit, the fruit of faith, the fruit of hope, the fruit of your love.

And we ask this to His glory, His honor, and His praise.

Amen.

Please be seated.

Well, good morning.

Maybe for some of you you have heroes of the faith from the Bible that you look to for inspiration and an example, a role model.

I think for many of us, the first folks that come to mind could be Moses, maybe Abraham, King David.

But I'd like to draw attention to a hidden hero of the faith.

Some one that inspires me by their life and their testimony.

And that is this Canaanite woman that we read about this morning in the Gospel of Matthew.

It's a unique story.

It's only one of two places in the recorded history of Jesus that someone is commended by him for their great faith.

Only two.

She's one of only two, the Roman centurion being the other.

There's something special about this woman.

Something special that I think a lot of us can learn from today in our own journey and walk with God.

This woman came to Jesus with a problem.

That's often how the story starts.

That's often what brings us to God and to the feet of Jesus is a problem in our life.

She had a pretty serious, personal and heartbreaking problem that she brought to Jesus.

Her daughter, she says, was severely oppressed by a demon.

Now, we don't have time to go into the reality of spiritual warfare, the fact that we're in a spiritual battle this morning, that's not the point of this sermon.

But suffice it to say that we are up against an adversary and a host of other spiritual beings that are working against the purposes of God in this world and against the people that were created in his image.

But like I said, it's not about the nature of the problem this morning.

It has more to do with the fact that this problem could not be solved by a doctor.

This problem could not be solved with money.

This problem could not be solved with a clever parenting strategy or approach to her daughter.

This was a problem that only God could solve.

It wasn't physical, it wasn't emotional, it wasn't psychological, it was spiritual in nature.

And this woman recognized that, that she needed a spiritual answer.

And so she came to Jesus.

And she came appealing to Jesus, saying, Oh Lord, son of David, have mercy on me.

Oh Lord, son of David, have mercy on me.

This woman, a Canaanite woman, recognizes that Jesus is a king.

Because she's referring to the fact that Jesus is in the line of David, that he was actually the Messiah, the king that Israel had been waiting for, to fulfill all of the promises of God to his people.

It's interesting that the Canaanite woman recognizes this because the Canaanites were considered one of the most persistent and insidious enemies of Israel.

That's the first extraordinary thing about this woman.

And about this story is everything that she overcame that could have easily driven her away from Jesus.

She was a Canaanite.

She was considered an enemy of the Jews.

Not to mention she was a woman, which would have put her pretty low on the social ladder.

That didn't stop her, though.

She comes to Jesus recognizing he has a unique power and authority because that's what kings have, right?

When you come before a king, you're looking for help.

The kind of help that you can't get from somebody else.

But he's not just an earthly king, he's a heavenly king that has spiritual answers to our spiritual problems in our life.

So she comes to Jesus, and what's his response?

Exactly.

Silence.

It's as if Jesus is completely ignoring this woman, this very brave woman.

It says that Jesus did not answer her a word.

Maybe you've experienced that in your life, in your walk with God, with Jesus, where you came to him with something really important.

Something you were desperate for.

And you were met with silence.

You didn't hear anything.

There wasn't a response.

There wasn't a reply.

And you were left in a place of confusion, feeling lost, maybe even hurt, maybe even offended that God wasn't talking.

He wasn't answering.

He wasn't responding.

And yet that didn't deter this woman.

She overcomes yet another obstacle on the way to Jesus.

And she goes to his disciples next, and they get kind of perturbed and annoyed by her, and they come to Jesus saying, please, please, Jesus, send this woman away.

To which Jesus replies, I came, I was sent, I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.

I've sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.

In other words, you're not my priority.

And it's true, Jesus, the Messiah, was sent first to the people of Israel.

It's something that we touch on on that passage from Isaiah as well, that that was his mission to restore and redeem the people of Israel that God had chosen many, many ages ago through Abraham.

And so his priority was Israel.

And yet, and yet, here we are with this Canaanite woman who's hearing this and probably thinking, maybe like we have at certain points in our life, well, maybe I'm just not a priority for God.

Maybe he's got more important things to do, or more important people to give attention to.

Or maybe we look around at the lives of other people and we think to ourselves, well, they sure seem to have God's blessing, God's favor, God's provision.

What about me?

Am I not a priority?

It's yet another obstacle that she has to overcome and press through, which she does.

Coming to Jesus and kneeling before him with a beautiful prayer.

If you want just a quick side teaching on prayer, this is a good one.

Three words.

Lord, help me.

You don't have to get a seminary to learn how to pray like this.

Lord, help me.

She kneels before Jesus in a posture of humility.

Lord, help me.

You're the only one that can.

To which he replies, it's not right to take the children's bread and throw it to the dogs.

Does that make you a little uncomfortable?

It's a little confusing.

This is Jesus, right?

It's not right to take the children's bread and throw it to the dogs.

There's no way to avoid the offensive nature of what Jesus says to this woman.

Associating her with a dog, with an animal.

An animal considered by the Israelites to be unclean.

That's highlighting the fact that she's not in the family or in the club, so to speak.

It seems pretty cruel on the surface, doesn't it?

And there might be some of you right now that are feeling a little offended for this woman, a little bit confused, that it's not right for Jesus to treat this woman in that way.

But again, I would suggest that most of us have had moments like this as well.

Where God, where Jesus has done or said something that offended us.

It offended us.

It offended our sense of justice, maybe, offended our sense of equality or fairness.

Maybe we were reading through the Bible and we got to this story, and you were like, that's not right, God.

You shouldn't have done that.

That can't be right.

And whether you realized it or not, you were offended.

You were offended.

This was one of those moments for this woman.

She could have easily been offended, humiliated in this moment.

And then she just comes.

It had to be the Holy Spirit.

I'm sorry.

It had to be the Holy Spirit.

Then inspired the words that came from this woman's mouth after be called after being called a dog.

She says to Jesus, yes, Lord.

Yet even the dogs eat the crumbs from their master's table.

Wow.

Wow.

That's impressive.

That's inspiring.

What comes from her lips.

After all that she's been through, everything that she's overcome, she's not deterred.

Jesus is pretty impressed too.

You don't find many places in the Bible where Jesus is impressed.

Oh woman, great is your faith.

Great is your faith.

This is an extraordinary woman with extraordinary faith.

Now, why would Jesus do all of these things?

Why would he handle it the way he handled this?

Well, I would suggest that Jesus knew what he was doing from the very beginning of this story.

He knew what was in this woman's heart.

He knew the quality and the depth of her faith in him.

And he wanted other people to see it.

He wanted other people to appreciate it.

And he wanted other people to learn from it.

Starting first with his disciples, those knuckleheads who wanted to shoe her away, those guys that probably were looking at her like a dog, and using her in a plot twist, which Jesus loves, to turn her into the hero of the story, a hero of the faith that we can learn from today.

Now, I want to, real quick, talk about two other stories in relation to hers that help to draw out the incredible nature of her faith and help us to learn a little something about how we can work toward great faith ourselves.

All right?

One of the stories was shared last week where Jesus walks on the water.

And Peter steps out of the boat himself, walks on the water to Jesus.

Makes it all the way to Jesus.

That's pretty impressive.

At which point he sees and notices the wind and begins to sing.

Jesus saves him, right?

And what does Jesus have to say to Peter?

Oh you of little faith.

That's a little different than this story.

So we've got, oh you of little faith, God just walked on water.

And this Canaanite woman, whom Jesus says, Great is your faith.

What's the difference?

I mean, Peter walked on water, ladies and gentlemen.

That seems like pretty great faith to me.

What we need to consider, I think, and part of the lesson here is that Peter had a lot of things that this Canaanite woman did not.

He had had countless experiences and opportunities to see with his own eyes the power and authority of Jesus.

Healing people, setting people free, miracles that he had witnessed.

He was on the inner circle with the disciples.

He was an Israelite.

He was in the club.

He was in the family.

He had all these things going for him.

As to compare to this Canaanite woman who was nobody, who probably had just heard some stories about Jesus, who had to overcome one thing after another after another after another, in her experience with Jesus.

What I would suggest is that it's not so much the spectacular nature of what we do, it's what we overcome that makes our faith great.

And she overcame a lot, this one.

During which he says, They honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.

They honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.

The disciples catch on and they they go to coach Jesus.

Hey, Jesus, I'm not sure if you realize this, but the Pharisees were offended when you said that.

Oh, really?

Oh, I'm sorry.

I didn't mean to offend anybody.

God forbid.

What a contrast, right?

The Pharisees, the religious elite, the people who were supposed to be in the know that should have been the first people to recognize who Jesus was and who they were dealing with.

They're offended.

Their pride is wounded by Jesus in comparison to this Canaanite woman, this humble Canaanite woman who endures all of these things that could easily have offended her and driven her away from the presence of Jesus, and yet she overcame every single one of them.

One of the things that you have to overcome on the way to great faith is offense.

Those moments in life where you might be tempted to be offended by something that God does or doesn't do that you think you should or says that gets under your skin, that maybe wounds that pride that you don't think you have or struggle with in your life.

So great faith.

This woman had extraordinary, unique faith.

A faith that if we're looking at it from our perspective, we can learn from because of how she responded to number one, the silence.

Great faith is often built and revealed in those moments of silence where we're not getting the answer from God that we've been looking for and longing for, maybe we're even desperate for.

Next, great faith is developed and revealed in times of perceived neglect.

Perceived neglect.

Why is that, God?

It's often in moments like that we have an opportunity to respond as she did and actually grow in our faith and reveal the quality of the faith and trust that we have in him.

In those moments where we have to actually trust in God's nature and character rather than circumstances that might seem to indicate his neglect.

These circumstances seem to indicate that you've abandoned me, God.

But I choose to believe in your character as a good, faithful, loving, merciful, righteous God.

And then lastly, great faith is developed and revealed when our pride is wounded.

When our pride is wounded, when in those moments that our pride could be offended.

This woman, it was as if her humility was like a shield against offense, the potential to be offended.

And it created this opportunity inside of her to have great faith and trust and belief that was able to push through and overcome the obstacles in her life.

So what does that mean for you and me?

Where are you in this story?

Where are you in your own process of overcoming different obstacles like this woman?

Are you feeling ignored by God?

Maybe that you're not a priority.

Are you feeling like he's giving you the silent treatment?

He's not saying things, or he's not talking about what you want to talk about, or answering the questions that are important to you.

Is it an opportunity in your life to dig deep and to trust in his goodness, his love, his faithfulness when circumstances seem to indicate otherwise?

Is it an opportunity for you to do that?

Would you like to come to God and say, Lord, help me?

I'm struggling to believe.

Because I think sometimes that's the best place to start is just to get real with God and say, you know, I'm offended, God.

You're not doing what you're supposed to do or what I think you should be doing.

And to be honest with him and confess it, recognize it, and move through it.

You know, Jesus, Jesus did everything that this woman did.

Jesus was driven by the same kind of resolute, fiery love that this mother was, who refused to quit.

She wouldn't give up.

That's the kind of love that drove Jesus to the cross.

Jesus, who more than any other human being, had a right to be offended, and yet who also put his absolute faith and trust in his father, even when he was on the cross, even when he felt as if the father had neglected him, abandoned him, even in the father's silence.

And that's why Jesus allows this woman the honor and privilege of walking through an experience like his own to reveal something beautiful in her life.

You have an opportunity to do that as well.

You can be like the Canaanite woman.

Maybe there are people watching you and how you're responding to adversity, how you're responding to opposition, how you're responding to potential for offense.

What an awesome opportunity you have.

We have.

Let's pray.

Father, we thank you for your presence, and we thank you for this incredible testimony.

What's in it for us?

That's what we want to know this morning.

What are you saying to us personally?

Lord, we pray for your grace to grow in this kind of faith that you would say is great.

Kind of faith that blesses and brings a sense of pleasure to your heart.

We ask you, Holy Spirit, to use this story in our own story to guide us, to direct us, to give us a sense of faith, of perseverance, a grace to have the kind of humility that this woman had.

And not just for our own benefit, but for the people that are watching our lives as well.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.