Context Matters

All right, we are starting a new uh series of messages this week that we're calling There's More to the Story.

Uh this is gonna take us through the end of the year, so it's gonna be eight weeks.

Have you ever come across a verse or a story in the Bible and you're like, what is up with this?

Like, I don't quite know what to make of it.

Often it's uh maybe a problem text or something that uh as you read it, you're like, I'm not sure if I'm reading this right.

Um, often it's in those moments that if you'll dig a little bit deeper, you'll find that there's more to the story.

And if there's a missing piece of context or uh something that you're missing, once you get that, now the story takes on a whole new meaning.

It makes a lot more sense.

And so that's what we're gonna do for these next eight weeks.

But I kind of have a sub-goal, and that sub-goal is I just want to keep equipping you and giving you things that will help you to dig deeper and to uh study God's word better on your own.

Like I'd hate for you to come to a problem text and go, man, I don't know what to do.

Should I ignore that?

Should I just move past it, pretend like I didn't read it, or misinterpret it?

I want to continue to give you resources and point you in a direction where when that happens on a Tuesday, you don't have to wait till maybe someday I preach on it.

Okay, you can go in and dig deeper yourself.

So throughout this series, I'm gonna be sharing some resources with you.

Um my wife and I do a podcast that drops on Thursdays, and we call it Dialogue, and we'll we'll, you know, these are monologues and we'll do dialogues on Thursdays.

And uh this week we're gonna be talking about three questions, but I'll give you one of them right now.

People ask me a lot, they're like, hey man, what what are you reading?

You know, you might share some history or some things that aren't in the Bible that helps us understand the Bible better.

What are the areas where you're educating yourself or resources that you use?

And so I'm gonna share uh some of those uh this week in the the dialogue podcast, and then throughout the uh the week, the continued weeks, I want to just keep arming you with these things so that uh uh so that you can handle this stuff well.

Uh, when you think about context, okay, think about have you ever been in a place where um you were really trying to glean some wisdom?

Maybe you had an important decision that you needed to make, and um you called a mentor, you you you phoned somebody or you met up with somebody whose wisdom you admire.

And so what do you do in that conversation is you give them context.

You sit down and you start explaining, okay, the who, what, when, where, and why so that we can figure out what to do next.

And that can be super challenging.

Have you ever been the spot where you're like meeting with somebody, they're starting from zero, and you're trying to like synthesize, you know, years of conversations and events and characters and things that have happened so that they have enough information to be able to uh give you some good advice.

And good mentors will ask context questions.

So you'll do the best to summarize, but then they'll ask you more.

Hey, tell me some more about this person, or tell me more about this situation, have you tried this before?

Have you tried that?

And so they'll they'll ask context questions, and then sometimes, and I've had this happen before, where based on the information I gave them, they gave me a piece of advice that wasn't good.

Like it might have like it's a wise person, but they didn't give me good advice, and I realized I had a missing piece of context.

And so I'll go, oh, you know what?

Sorry, I should have mentioned that, and you tell them that, and then they go, Oh, well, yeah, now that you mentioned that, forget everything I just said, okay?

Uh and then they give you maybe a totally different piece of advice.

My point is, the more context you have, the more that you're setting, um you know, establishing reality, defining reality, and often the messages will change.

And I think that's true with the Bible.

When you look at the Bible, sometimes we take a point away or um we make an observation that might not actually be what the point that's being made.

And sometimes those things get lost in translation around biblical genres, sometimes historical events, sometimes it's things that are beneath the surface.

You know, the Bible is written primarily by Eastern authors.

It's like an Eastern document written to mostly Eastern audience.

And so a lot of the tactics that you have in Eastern teaching is there's a lot of story, there's a lot of analogy, there's a lot of metaphor, there's a lot of hidden treasures that that will, uh if you'll wrestle for it and you'll stay with it, you're supposed to keep thinking about these stories.

You're supposed to keep looking deeper and digging deeper, and when you do, you find something.

And so a lot of it's written that way.

Western, okay, we're Westerners, we do tend to think like in bullet points.

Give me the point, you know, reverse engineer.

Okay, we we want to be able to have it like totally spelled out, and often, okay, in the way the Bible's written, it's designed to be wrestled with and to be turned over.

Um, so one of the things I want you to do, and I think before we sort of get into the context of the Bible, is to start with the context of you and the context of yourself.

And when you think about self-awareness, okay, how I approach the Bible, what's going on in here and here, okay, will often affect my ability to receive what the Bible is saying.

All right, so there are terms like presuppositions, things you would presuppose, essentially beliefs or thoughts that you have crystallized.

And so you already believe that.

And if you're not careful and you're not aware of what your presuppositions are, in other words, think of it like this: before I know what to believe, I need to know what I want to believe.

Before I know what to believe, I need to start with what I want to believe.

And what I want to believe might be my presupposition.

I've got whether it's uh it might be a psychological or theological belief, a biblical belief, that I want to believe this because it may be connected to my relationships.

It may be connected to my heritage, it may be connected to traditions and people I care about, or may even be uh connected to my view of God and what's right and wrong.

Those are so intertwined, okay, and so often if you're not careful and you don't know what you want to believe, then you're prone to what we would call confirmation bias.

In other words, you'll just read the Bible and you'll be looking to confirm what you already believe.

If I know my presuppositions and where I'm prone to confirmation bias, it sets you and I up for success big time because now I know the areas where I'm going to be tempted to try to make the Bible say what I want it to say.

Instead of having really the courage and what we would call the faith to trust God enough to go, Lord, I want to see your word as true as I can see it, because I believe that that truth is good and that that truth will set me free.

But often it will be disruptive.

And so if I know what my uh presuppositions are, I know where I'm prone to confirmation bias, and I'm aware that I'm probably making assumptions that are even blind spots, assumptions I don't even know I'm making.

Now I'm sort of ready to approach because as you continue to see more to the story and you build out better contextual understanding, often the message that you thought was in the text isn't what was in the text.

There's actually a different point being made.

And that can be sometimes hard to embrace because you have to let go of something to lay hold of that, okay?

And so that's honestly uh just you know, spoil spoiler alert.

I'm gonna do that for the rest of my life or until you guys run me out of here.

Like I'm gonna keep trying to do that.

And I think that's our that should be our attitude and our open heart, and really, again, one of our great acts of faith.

Um, okay, so here's what we're gonna do.

We're gonna look at Matthew 15 today.

Matthew 15, and we're gonna go into um, we're gonna look at a story that on the surface might be a little off-putting or confusing, and then we're gonna look at more to the story.

All right, here we go.

Matthew 15, starting in verse 21.

Says, leaving that place, Jesus withdrew to the region of Tyre and Sidon.

A Canaanite woman from that vicinity came to him, crying out, Lord, son of David, have mercy on me.

My daughter is demon-possessed and suffering terribly.

Jesus did not answer a word.

So his disciples came to him and urged him, Send her away, for she keeps carrying, crying out after us.

And he answered, I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel.

The woman came and knelt before him.

Lord, help me, she said.

He replied, It is not right to take the children's bread and toss it to the dogs.

Yes, it is, Lord, she said.

Even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master's table.

And then Jesus said to her, Woman, You have great faith.

Your request is granted, and her daughter was healed at that moment.

Okay, so let's say you're a small group leader, you took you had the courage to start a Bible study, and you got some people, and you're like, hey guys, this week we find our way to Matthew 15, and we're gonna be reading verses 21 through 28 of this story, and uh, and then we're gonna get together and discuss.

And as you read it, you're like, Okay, this is cool that Jesus heals this lady's daughter and everything, but why did he have to call her a dog?

And then you're like, oh man, somebody's gonna ask that question in the group, you know, and then you're just praying, like, Lord, help nobody to ask that question in the group, because I don't really exactly know how to answer that question.

And sure enough, you get in the group and you try to create a distraction with the miracle, and somebody's like, Why did Jesus call the lady a dog?

Like, was that necessary?

Like, what is he doing?

Why would he say that?

That seems odd.

If you were to uh go and start looking into this in the explanation, you could look up sermons on the Canaanite woman or the Syrophoenician woman, as it's told in Mark.

Um, and you would hear even in commentaries, sometimes people give what I have found to be an unsatisfactory explanation.

And what they do is they go into the Greek and they go, Well, what you need to understand is that when it came to the Greek word for dog, there were two different kinds of words.

And the first word was a dog that was like a scavenger type dog, it would have been more of an insult type dog, it was a bad dog, and so to call somebody that word for dog was an insult.

And but Jesus doesn't use that word, he uses a word for little dog, okay?

And so, in fact, so you think I'm playing, look at look his stuff up.

Um he uses the Greek word for little dog, okay?

And in fact, even in some of your translations, if you just read it, it says little dog.

And so they're like, and so he wasn't saying she was a scavenger dog, he was saying she was like a lap dog, and so it was less offensive, okay?

And it's like he called her a dog, dude.

I mean, I I mean, whether it was a German shepherd or a Pekingese or a husky or a chihuahua, I don't know what it was.

I just know he called her a dog.

And it's like, what's going on in this text?

Um, we talked last week, Jesus calls Herod a fox, which doesn't mean that much to us, but in that day that would have been like calling someone a rat.

We know in in um in Matthew 5, when he's or uh sorry, Matthew 7, in the Sermon on the Mount, when he's talking about essentially taking your traditions or things you find to be holy and putting them in front of a Gentile, he says, Don't cast your pearls before swine or what is holy before dogs.

So this is common language, frankly, it was uh like an epithet.

This was a way of calling uh this is what the Jewish people call Gentiles dogs.

And this was a Canaanite woman.

So, okay, what is going on?

Okay, good.

There, good question.

There's more to the story.

So here's what we're gonna do.

Sometimes, in order to get the full context, you have to go into some biblical history that's not necessarily in the text.

Okay, but oftentimes, if you'll just look closely at the text and you'll connect the dots, you'll find buried treasure ultimately that will help you see more clearly.

So here's what we're gonna do.

This is do this on your own whenever you come up against a Matthew 15, 21 through 28 type thing.

Okay, we're gonna go back to Matthew 14.

So if you have your Bible, go ahead and flip back.

If not, I'll summarize it for you.

So we're in, we just read Matthew 15 with the Canaanite woman.

Let's go back to Matthew 14 and find out what happened one chapter earlier, because we're gonna find some good stuff.

One chapter earlier, Matthew 14, the first few verses, John the Baptist is beheaded.

Who is John the Baptist?

This is Jesus' favorite cousin.

John the Baptist, Jesus says in another text, there's never been anyone who's ever lived who is greater than John the Baptist.

So whoever you think is the greatest person you've ever known, that's how Jesus felt about John.

What happens?

Well, Herod Antipas cuts his head off.

He chops his head off, he literally decapitates, puts his head on a platter, and brings it into a drunken party for everybody to go and cheer.

And does it as a favor to his wife?

So Jesus gets this news.

Don't deify him to the point you forget about his humanity.

How would you feel if the greatest person you've ever known had something like that happen and it's done?

And so Jesus felt all of the feelings of rage and sadness and the full spectrum of beginning the grieving process.

And just as he's starting to begin to grieve in Matthew 14, a huge crowd of people come.

And so his grief, the beginning of his grief, is intersected with this group of people who have great need.

And now Jesus, in his compassion, meets the needs of the people.

Who are these people?

They're in the region of Galilee.

These are these are Jesus.

These are Jewish people.

Okay, so Jesus and his disciples, these this is us, these are our people.

And so Jesus meets their needs right there.

And this is the backdrop now of Jesus feeding the 5,000.

I want to read this to you in Matthew 14 so that you uh and I want you to pay attention to some detail.

So here we go, Matthew 14, 17.

Um, they said, We we have here only five loaves of bread and two fish.

They answered, Bring them here to me, he said.

And he directed the people to sit down on the grass.

Okay, so remember that.

He directed the people to sit down on the grass, and then taking the five loaves and two fish, he looked up to heaven and he gave thanks and broke the loaves.

Remember, he gave thanks.

So he has them sit down on the grass, he gives thanks for the loaves and the fish, and then he gave them to the disciples to give to the people.

So now you guys distribute.

And so they they took it, and then all who ate were satisfied.

So it's the miracle of the multiplication of the loaves and fish, and and then at the end there was leftovers, and so they pick up basketfuls of broken pieces that were left over, and a number the number of those who ate were about five thousand men, besides women and children.

Okay, so John the Baptist is beheaded, Jesus feeds the five thousand, he sends them across the Sea of Galilee to an area called Gennesaret.

So you go over there, and then he goes to be alone with the Father, and it's that night that he's walking across the Sea of Galilee, and he's walking on water with Peter.

Remember this?

Peter starts to sink, he helps them up.

Okay, they they get to the shore, and then at the end, at the very end of chapter 14, is Jesus heals a bunch of people.

Everybody's like, oh, the healer guy's here.

So everybody in Genneseret who's got pain and need, they all show up and he and he just heals them all.

What a chapter.

You're starting to grieve a very terrible death.

You've fed 5,000 people with five loaves and two fish, and met the need in the middle of your grief.

You found room in your heart to have compassion.

You walk across the Sea of Galilee, have a defining moment with Peter, your friend, and then you get to a shore, and another crowd's waiting on you, and you do the same thing for them.

That's the end of chapter 14.

Okay, chapter 15.

Verse 1.

So this is literally the beginning of the chapter 15.

Then some Pharisees and teachers of the law came to Jesus from Jerusalem and ask, Why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders?

Not why do your disciples even break the Torah?

It's just tradition.

These are man-made traditions.

Why do your disciples bring break the tradition of our elders?

Why are they disrespecting our elders by not washing their hands the right way?

So they don't wash their hands before they eat.

So they're bringing up a ceremonial hand washing thing that Jesus and his disciples weren't doing up to their liking.

Now, to get this fully understood, go ahead and bring up the map.

Okay, you see this blue, the small blue uh body of water up there?

Okay, that's the Sea of Galilee.

Okay?

So the right of that is Gennesaret.

So he feeds the 5,000 where you see the big white circle there.

He sends them across to Gennesaret, okay?

To where he heals all these people.

While he's in Gennesaret, it says that these Pharisees and teachers of the law come up to him and confront him about hand washing rituals.

And where does it say that these people are from?

Jerusalem.

Where is Jerusalem?

Here.

They're all the way up there.

That means these people traveled seventy five miles with primitive transportation.

Either by foot or by mule or by something to go seventy-five miles to tell him he's not washing his hands right.

And Jesus is like, dude, I just lost my cousin.

I just started to grieve.

If you want to know why my hands are dirty, it's because I squared away with 5,000 people who I had compassion for when my heart was broken.

And then I went across the Sea of Galilee and in the process helped my friend only to land right here and to help all these people, and you're here talking to me about how to wash my hands.

See what's going on is the ceremonial hand washing wasn't just about the ceremonial hand washing, it was about clean and unclean people.

And so what they're doing is ultimately saying, because you're not keeping this these rules, these man-made rules, okay, you are unclean.

And so Jesus has a confrontation and a conflict with them.

And he says in verse 7, you hypocrites.

Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you.

So he's taking, oh, you want to talk about ancestors.

He goes into the prophet Isaiah.

He says, Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you.

You read what Isaiah wrote, but you didn't know it was about you.

He says, verse 8, These people will honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.

Their worship is a farce.

They teach man-made ideas as commands from God.

He goes on to say, it's not what goes into your mouth.

So it's not kosher eating, or it's not how you wash your hands that makes you clean.

He said, but it's what comes out of your heart.

So so they went 75 miles to give this guy a bunch of garbage about how he was washing his hands, how his disciples were washing their hands, because they think in some way that's ultimately this ritual is what makes you a clean person before God.

And so he goes, It's it's it's not it's not what makes you clean.

It's it's the condition of your heart.

And so he has this tremendous conflict with these people uh who came 75 miles to try to trap him with this.

In verse 12, it says, Then the disciples came to him and asked, Do you know the Pharisees were offended when when they heard this?

So his disciples are are upset that in the course of that conversation that the Pharisees got their feelings hurt.

And Jesus replied in verse 13, Every plant that my heavenly Father has not planted will be pulled up by the roots.

Leave them.

They are blind guides, and if the blind lead the blind, both will fall into a pit.

In other words, choose you this day.

Are you gonna get so caught up in what you want to believe?

You're so you're familiar with what they're telling you.

I'm giving you a new thing.

And you're not seeing it, you're missing it.

And who are you going to follow?

Are you going to follow these blind guides into this pit, or are you going to open your eyes to what I'm trying to show you?

And Peter said, Explain the parable to us.

Verse 16.

Jesus said, Are you still so dull?

Some of your Bibles, uh, your translation says, Do you still not understand?

The word for dull here is a Greek word that has a range of meaning between unintelligent, unwise, or undiscerning.

And the undiscerning has an uh an implication or a probability of it being a moral defect.

Here's what Jesus is saying.

Are you either unable to understand what I've been trying to tell you, or are you unwilling?

Is it that you can't get it?

Or that there's something in the way, there's an impediment, there's a presupposition, there's something that's agitating you that if you listen to what I'm saying and you get what I'm trying to show you, that you really don't want to get it.

And because you don't want to get it, you refuse to get it.

And Jesus is in conflict with the disciples.

He is frustrated.

You can feel it.

He says, Are you are you are you still so dull?

He said, Don't you see that whatever enters the mouth goes into the stomach and then out the body?

It's a little crude, but he's like, you know, you're you're all hung up in this kosher eating.

He goes, it goes in and out.

It really doesn't matter.

He said, but the things that come out of a mouth come from the heart, and that's what defiles them.

And and you can feel his energy.

Why?

Because Jesus is like, guys, it's chapter 15.

It's Matthew 15.

I called you in chapter four.

You saw me heal people from your hometown and the decapolis.

People you like and people you don't like.

Then you saw me go to the Sermon on the Mount and for three chapters take you to the heart level and fulfill the law.

Give you thought patterns that are the way God thinks.

And then in chapter eight, I did things you'd never seen before.

Like I touched a leper.

And I went to a Roman center a Roman centurion, told me about his hurting servant, and I offered to go into his house, which you've never even done.

And I offered to go nurse this man back to health.

And then I took you all across the Sea of Galilee, and a storm kicked up, and I calmed the wind and the waves, and I connected the dot to Jonah.

And then we went and we landed, and the freakiest guy any of us have ever seen was waiting on us.

It was a the demoniac.

This guy is full of all kinds of demons.

And instead of running in the other direction, I squared away with him and I ministered to him and I met his need.

And you've been following me around this whole time.

And then you just saw me walk through grieving my cousin.

You saw me feed the 5,000.

You saw all of this and you still don't get it?

Do you not is it that you don't want to get it?

And so he goes back, he calls them dull, that he is frustrated.

Now, there's more to the story because now that is the lead-in to this story of Jesus coming in contact with this Canaanite woman.

Now we're ready to start looking at this story.

Okay, so leaving that place, Gennesarit, Jesus withdrew to the region of Tyrandsidon.

Okay, Tyronsidon, you see him up there to the left, is those red dots up top left.

Okay, what is Tyrant Sidon?

It said he withdrew to the region of Tyrand Sidon.

So you see, he leaves Israel.

He leaves and he goes to Phoenicia.

What is Phoenicia?

Tyronsidon.

These are places that are considered to be so unclean that Jesus wanted to get away from these fools that tracked him for 75 miles that want to talk to me about washing my hands.

And he goes, you know what?

I know where I can withdraw.

I know where I can get a little break.

Because these guys will track me to Guinnesseret, but they ain't going to Phoenicia.

And so he goes to the most Godforsaken place any of them will go.

They would not dare go into Phoenicia.

They wouldn't dare go to Tyronside.

This is the most godless, okay, in their mind, the most godless pagan place.

It's like Michigan.

It's like, who with any decency would go to that place up north?

Northwest.

You just wouldn't go there.

So he's like, what's the one place these Pharisees won't follow me?

And he goes to Phoenicia.

So that's Tyronsidon.

And then verse 22 says, and a Canaanite woman from that vicinity came to him.

Now, this is where some context helps.

Matthew, some of you guys have been here.

You're not new, you've been around.

We've talked about Matthew.

Who was Matthew's intended audience?

Who was he writing to?

The Jewish people.

And so when he uses the term Canaanite, he's using an outdated term.

If you read it in Mark, Mark was writing it not just to Jewish people, but to Romans.

He was targeting a Roman listener.

And so he uses the term the Syrophoenician woman.

Because Syrophoenician woman was a current term that would have made sense to Romans.

Canaanite was way out of date, but he uses it because to the Jewish reader, you're going to have an allergic reaction when you hear Canaanite.

Who were the Canaanites?

If you go in the Old Testament, the Canaanites were the people who occupied the promised land.

So when the Jewish people went, right, after they've come out of Egypt, after they've gone to Mount Sinai, and they're going to lay hold of the promised land.

And you remember the story of Joshua, where they walk around the walls and the walls come down, and who's waiting to fight?

The Canaanites.

So the Canaanites were the sworn enemies.

And you even read again outside the Bible, if you read like Josephus, like modern historians from that time will tell you the angst, the tension, the hatred between Jewish people and people of Canaanite descent, Syrophoenicians, is at another level.

And so now this, but Matthew again wants to draw that out.

He's saying that so the reader will catch this.

So he says, a Canaanite woman from that vicinity came to him, crying out, Lord, son of David, have mercy on me.

My daughter is demon-possessed and suffering terribly.

And Jesus did not answer a word, so his disciples came to him and urged him, send her away, for she keeps crying out to us.

Now think about this.

Jesus is frustrated with the disciples.

Jesus is going for 15 chapters.

I've been living it in front of you.

I've taught you.

I've had you come follow me.

I did the Sermon on the Mount and I've lived it in front of you, and you still are dull.

You still either can't get it or won't get it.

You're either unwilling or unable or something, but I know you're not unable.

You're unwilling.

There's an impediment.

And so I have to do something here provocative enough that you get the point that I'm trying to make.

And so what's happening?

So this woman, right?

This Canaanite woman, they know they don't like her.

They don't want to be in tire and Sidon.

They don't want to be there.

So we're in this place we don't want to be, and this lady who is as other as other can be comes yelling.

She's screaming, she's yelling in abject desperation.

And they're so off put by who she is and her tone and how she sounds that they never listen to what she says.

Look at what she says.

Lord.

This Canaanite woman calls this Jewish man Lord.

And then she says, son of David.

What a son of David.

Son of David is a revelation of Jesus as the Messiah from the line of David.

Jesus' own people aren't calling him son of David.

Jesus' own disciples aren't seeing him as son of David.

I just had to have it out at Gennesaret over whether I'm washing my hands the right way or not.

And these people are trying to take me out.

And here I come to this Canaanite woman, our sworn enemy.

We have so much baggage in the relationship that frankly, still today, it's being fought about.

And this woman comes up, and her very appearance is off-putting, and her tone is off-putting.

The fact that they can't even hear what she's saying.

She's calling him Messiah, Lord, Son of David.

And then she says, Have mercy, have mercy on me.

So the one who in the Sermon on the Mount in the Beatitude said, Blessed are the merciful.

And she's asking him for mercy.

And then she says, Essentially, I'm not here on my own behalf.

My daughter is demon-possessed, and she's suffering terribly.

She comes on behalf of someone else, on behalf of her daughter, just like Jesus came on behalf of us.

And so it's in the middle of that that Jesus doesn't say anything and he lets it play out.

And what I believe is when you look at this in the full context, you see this provocative moment, this intense lesson that Jesus is doing two things.

One, he's going to meet this woman's need, he's going to meet her right where she is.

But two, he's going to do something so profound that the disciples can't miss it.

So what he does here is he takes their internal language and he says it in front of them.

And so he says in verse 24, when she's crying out and they say, Send her away.

By the way, they say, send her away.

A few verses earlier, they were super upset that he had offended the Pharisees.

Super upset.

Jesus, you know you offended the Pharisees.

You didn't have to be so harsh.

And here's this woman begging for her child's life.

And they're like, send her away.

And the whole thing's about clean and who's clean and who's not.

Because we're in Tyre and Sidon and she's Canaanite.

And so because of something that happened all these years ago, we're still gonna just declare her clean because we don't like her tone.

You didn't even listen to what she said.

And so Jesus doesn't say a word, and then they say, Send her away, and then he says, I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel.

Okay?

Jesus says that, and it sounds like he's making a statement.

In other words, I'm only here for my own people.

Is that what he's saying?

I mean, is that true?

Based on what we know of the weight of scripture, of what we know what happened before this and what happens after this, did Jesus come to earth just for one group of people?

Of course not.

In fact, he's already showed it to him.

In chapter four, in chapter four, he heals all kinds of gentiles.

In chapter eight, like we just talked, he ministers to Gentiles.

By the way, Matthew puts a buried treasure in chapter one.

In chapter one, when he's given the genealogy of Jesus, he has four parentheticals of women that are in the line of Jesus, and one of them is Rahab, who's a Canaanite woman.

She's the one who hid the spies when they came to the promised land, and she ends up in Jesus' bloodline.

Matthew's been setting you up for chapter 15.

In chapter 1, he's like, there's a Canaanite woman in your Messiah's bloodline.

And so we know that he didn't just come for his own people.

We know that.

All the way back in Genesis, it said that the work that's done is going to be to the to the ends of the earth.

And of course, we know in the book of Acts, he's gonna give these disciples the great commission.

I want you to go to Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, ends of the earth.

He's talking about priority, he's talking about where he's starting.

But who's gonna take this message?

Who's going to take the kingdom of God beyond their own people?

Who's gonna who's gonna do it?

It's the disciples.

Jesus doesn't think this woman's a dog.

Jesus is training his disciples who a few verses earlier, he's like, Why are you so dull?

Why can you not see this?

I've been showing it to you over and over again.

Jesus is going, look, I tried with a scalpel and I tried to bury the treasure, but this is gonna be a two by four right across the forehead.

I'm gonna make sure you don't miss this lesson.

And so he takes their own internal thoughts and he says them in front of them.

Oh, I'm just here for the lost sheep of Israel.

And the woman came and knelt before him.

Lord, help me.

And he replied, It's not right to take the children's bread and toss it to the dogs.

He just fed 5,000 of their own people, and his disciples are loving this conversation.

They're loving it.

They're like, Yeah, yeah, he came just for us.

He came for the lost sheep of it.

Yeah, yeah, that's right, that's right.

Not to the dogs, not to the dogs.

Why would why would God give to the to the dogs what he could give to his children?

And they they just they remembered the big meal that was just served.

And then this woman, verse 27, she says, Yes, it is, Lord.

Even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from the master's table.

This woman, this woman, she believes in him so much.

She knows the son of David when she sees him.

She trusts him so much she refuses to be offended and refuses to walk away and takes the dog comment and puts it back with this witty, like comeback, like, all right, whatever, dogs.

Yeah, even the dog is near the table, gets a little something.

And Jesus in verse 28 said, and he comes out of character and he flips it back and he goes, Woman, you have great faith.

Your grant, your request is granted, and her daughter was healed at that moment.

Story's not done, there's more to the story.

So they get done.

His disciples are like, What just happened?

What just happened?

We just had this conversation about clean.

We just went to the place that we thought was the most unclean.

We just had a woman who we thought we were all unified, and we saw her in many ways as less than human.

We see a dog.

And in front of us, we thought Jesus was totally with us, and all of a sudden he flips it at the end, but Jesus is not done because verse 29, it said, Jesus left there and went along the Sea of Galilee.

So he goes, he leaves Phoenicia, but he doesn't go to the Jewish uh part of uh yet.

He goes uh stays on the Gentile part of the Sea of Galilee, went along the Sea of Galilee.

Now look at this.

Then he went up on a mountainside and sat down.

And what is Matthew doing?

He's connecting the dots.

Go back to Matthew 5 1.

It says Jesus went on the mountain, on the mountainside and sat down.

So he's referencing back to what Jesus did in the Sermon on the Mount, that now he's over.

And of course, they were glad to have that happen for us, but now here we are in chapter 15, and he's doing it for them.

And in verse 30, it says, Great crowds came to him, bringing the lame and the blind and the crippled and the mute and many others, and laid them at his feet, and he healed them.

Just like he did for us, he's doing it for them.

Verse 31.

Then the people who were amazed, uh were amazed when they saw the mute speaking and the cripple made well, and the lame walking and the blind seeing, and they praised the God of Israel.

But there's more to the story, and the ultimate plot twist, keep reading in Matthew 15, verse 32.

Matthew 15:32

After Jesus has put value on this woman, he never saw her as a dog, never saw her as a dog, but they saw her as a dog.

And he had to go into their mindset because I'm sending you to the ends of the earth.

And I'm not just sending you to feed people and heal people, I'm sending you to love people.

I'm I have a kingdom built on the power of love.

And if you think these people are dogs, then you're not going to love them.

When you think everybody other than you is less than you, then you're not going to be able to take my kingdom.

And so this is a this is an intense lesson that Jesus gives them.

And so after all of this and all this healing that he did for them, what they would have thought, no, this is only for the lost sheep of Israel.

This is only for the children.

And now he's doing it for the dogs.

And so it says in verse 32, Jesus called his disciples to him and said, I have compassion for these people.

They have already been with me three days, have nothing to eat.

I do not want to send them away hungry, or they may collapse on the way.

His disciples answered, Well, where can we get enough bread in this remote place to feed such a crowd?

Well, verse 34, how many loaves do you have?

Jesus asked.

Seven, they replied, and a few small fish.

We have a few scraps from the master's table from that 5,000 meal you just did.

And he told the crowd to sit down.

Does it look familiar?

He's doing the same thing in chapter 15 for them that he did for us in chapter 14.

And he took the seven loaves and fish, and when he had given thanks, just like he did in chapter 14, he broke them and gave them to the disciples, and they in turn to the people.

In other words, just like you served in chapter 14, the people who you thought were worthy, I'm now gonna ask you to serve in chapter 15 the people that you despise.

And so he he runs the miracle back, and they in turn served the people, and they all were satisfied.

Afterwards, the disciples picked up seven basketfuls of broken pieces that were left over, and the number of those who ate was 4,000 men besides women and children.

When you look at this story and you look at both the totality of chapter 14 and 15, and you zero in when when uh Jesus says, Why would I take the what belongs to the children and give it to the dogs?

And then you see what Jesus ultimately does is he's hammering away at their dog mindset, and what he's doing is he's training the children.

He's training the children of how to see people other than themselves.

It is a provocative, powerful lesson.

This is not Jesus thinking anybody's a dog, calling anybody a dog.

This doesn't give anybody permission to look down on anybody else.

It is the exact opposite.

It is a powerful story when you look at all of it.

And Matthew, the tax collector, got to see the whole thing.

And he writes it in the book of Matthew because he never wanted any disciple to forget the lesson Jesus gave those disciples.

I'm sending you to the ends of the earth.

I'm sending you to people who you may not on the surface like, you might have history with, you may have longstanding issues with, you may see them the way these men saw the Canaanites in general, and this woman who had a tone they didn't like.

And he's saying, Are you willing to hear what she's saying?

Are you willing to hear, or are you going to just be turned off by your bias, by your presupposition, or by your assumption that when she doesn't look like or they don't look like or sound like what you want them to look like and sound like you can't hear beneath the surface into somebody who's asking for mercy or somebody who has a need.

You gotta love somebody to look that deep.

And so Jesus is training their eyes and he's training their ears.

And Matthew wanted to make sure that we understood how important it was for us.

See, in chapter six, he taught them to pray, Our Father in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

And they had been praying it since chapter six, but they didn't know what they were praying for until chapter 15.

Because when they began to serve and begin to have compassion for and begin to understand what it actually means for thy kingdom to come to earth as it is in heaven, then they had to decide am I going to take the way I want to think, or am I gonna follow Jesus into what he's trying to show me?

And I think if we'll do the same thing and we'll allow It will go through the painful process of looking inward and going, is there anywhere that what I want to think, what I want to believe, is prohibiting me from seeing what God's trying to show me?

I think what God will start showing you is more.

And He'll show you more in people who you you don't like their tone and you don't like where they're coming from, but then you'll start to hear stuff.

You'll start to see like people that others might reject or that you might have rejected, that you start to see beneath the surface and listen a little bit more closely.

And it might be a coworker, it might be a neighbor, it might be someone in your family or your extended family that as of right now, it's just off-putting.

That's all there is to it.

It's just off-putting.

And you kind of wish Jesus would just send them away.

Just send them away, Lord.

Just send them away.

And in fact, actually, what he wants to do is help you to see differently and help me to see differently.

And I believe if we'll go through that process, it takes a lot of courage, it takes a lot of faith that the Lord will begin to show us things that we've never seen before and hear things that we've never heard before, and that we can be ultimately his disciples, bringing his kingdom to earth as it is in heaven.

Let's pray.

Lord, we come to you provoked by your word.

Lord, as we peel back layers and we connect dots across this story, and we see the relationship between the stories, your message and your point becomes very clear.

Lord, help us today to be able to see into our own hearts in maybe things we've been holding on to because maybe it brings us some sort of comfort.

Maybe it's tied to some kind of fear.

But the reality is it's caused us sometimes to be dull or to not understand, to either be unable or unwilling to see something that you're trying to show us that would reshape us.

Lord, it matters more to us to see what you're trying to show us than to hold on to the thing that we think we want to hold on to.

What a step of faith to let go so that we can receive what you want us to receive.

So this story of the disciples, Lord, we realize is not very far off from us.

And so today, Lord, we learn from it.

And I pray, God, that as a collective group you would help us, God, to see these things.

And as individuals, show us what you want us to see in Jesus' name.

Everybody said amen.