THE RULE OF GOD IS FULL OF MERCY
Matthew 15: 21-39
INTRODUCTION
Do you ever wonder about yourself? You ever shake your head at yourself
and wonder at your own hard heartedness and coldness toward God and people?
Do you ever look at your reaction to other people or to circumstances
in your life and say to yourself, "What is wrong with you?"
"Get a grip." It happened to me again this week. I needed to
fix a drawer in our kitchen. To fix it, I needed to use my drill. To use
the drill, I needed an extension cord. I looked in the place where I keep
extension cords and there were none to be found. I began to roam through
the house looking for an extension cord and crying out to the whole house,
"Where are my extension cords?" My wife could hear the edge
in my voice. She stopped me on one of my passes through the kitchen and
said to me, "So you need an extension cord to be happy. Is that right?"
God mercifully used her to bring me up short and keep me from going into
one of my little tantrums about how much work I have to do and how nobody
helps me, blah, blah, blah. I am often confounded by how little interest
I have in Christ compared to how much I know about him. Why is it so difficult
for me to pursue him and love people? Why am I so eager to do just about
anything else except pray and read his word and lead my family in worship?
Why do I take so much notice of how poorly others treat me but feel so
little sorrow over how poorly I treat others?
If you have these feelings of consternation at your lack of spiritual
fervor and love you are not alone. The apostle Paul describes the dilemma
of Christian living this way, "We know that the law is spiritual
but that I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin. I do not understand
what I do. For what I want to do I do not do but what I hate I do… I know
that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have
the desire to do good but I cannot carry it out."
One of the great Puritan pastors of England in the 17th century,
Richard Baxter, wrote this: "I know not what others think, but for
my own part I am ashamed of my stupidity, and wonder at myself that I
deal not with my own and others’ souls as one that looks for the great
day of the Lord; and that I can have room for almost any other thoughts
and words; and that such astonishing matters do not wholly absorb my mind….
I seldom come out of the pulpit but my conscience smites me that I have
been no more serious and fervent…. It asks me, ‘How could you speak of
life and death with such a heart? How could you preach of heaven and hell
in such a careless, sleepy manner? Do you believe what you say?’…. Truly
this is the peal that conscience does ring in my ears, and yet my drowsy
soul will not be awakened. O what a thing is an insensible, hardened heart!"
We sing a song here at River Hills written by the late Keith Green that
says in part, "My eyes are dry, my faith
is old, My heart is hard, my prayers are cold; And I know how I ought
to be: Alive to You and dead to me. Oh, what can be done For an old heart
like mine?"
You and I have no greater trouble than this; that our hearts are not
more taken up with Christ and the things of Christ. We all know how to
fear yet we do not fear the God who is a consuming fire. We all know how
to be sad and yet we are rarely sad about our sins. We are usually sad
about the sins of others against us. We all know how to admire and praise
and yet we do not admire and praise the only one who is truly admirable
and praiseworthy. We all know how to love and yet we do not love the one
who is worthy of our love. We ought to be asking with Keith Green, "What
can be done for an old heart like mine?" We have no more urgent or
important business in this world than getting a new heart.
I believe that the text before us today holds out the only hope we have.
You will notice that it begins by Jesus withdrawing from Galilee to the
region surrounding Tyre and Sidon. We are not Jewish and few of us know
anything about the geography of Palestine. So let me explain why this
is significant. Jesus has spent the better part of a year in Galilee,
which is part of Israel, teaching and healing mainly Jewish people. The
result has been huge crowds following him because they love being healed
and seeing people be healed. They love listening to Jesus’ teaching. They
love getting free meals. But they remain, for the most part, indifferent
to him and what he says. Their leaders have increasingly challenged him
and some are even plotting how to kill him. His disciples remain ignorant
of who he is and what he is doing. Herod, the governor of Galilee, has
murdered John the Baptist and is now turning his attention to Jesus. Finally,
as we saw last week, he has bluntly explained that the problem with human
beings is that we do evil because we are evil. He withdraws because his
work of establishing the kingdom of God is only meeting with resistance.
His withdrawal raises the question, "What will God do with a world
that is gone mad with sin?" If the Jewish people who have been given
such amazing revelations of God are so hard hearted, what will become
of the rest of us?
It is like he is stepping back and taking a deep breath and pondering
the situation. His withdrawal forces us to ask what will God do with old
hearts like ours? How will God conquer hearts so bent on evil and so opposed
to loving what is truly worth loving? While Jesus travels among mainly
Gentile people with his disciples in tow he reveals again how it is that
God will conquer our hearts.
What will Jesus do with this hard heart of mine? How will he make me
into a person who loves and needs him more than being right, more than
living an untroubled life? How will God give me a heart that is content
even when I can’t find extension cords?
MAIN POINT
Jesus conquers our hearts through his mercy because
I. His mercy is given freely, to those who trust him for it (vv. 21-28)
There are three scenes exhibiting the mercy of God in Jesus in this passage.
We are going to spend all of our time in this first scene in vv. 21-28.
If you are taking notes I’ll give you what goes in the blanks and you
can study them on your own. At first read you may be wondering how I can
even say that the first scene shows God’s mercy. It is probably one of
the most troubling scenes in the New Testament. It is troubling because
here is a mother pleading for her demon-possessed daughter and a silent,
reluctant to help, Jesus. The Jesus we encounter here seems somehow different
from the Jesus who has willingly helped every troubled person who has
come to him. He does not at first glance seem merciful but rather stern
and miserly and racist. However, I am convinced that we have in this story
of Jesus’ mercy great help for people with heart’s like ours. The help
that this story gives revolves around understanding what it means that
God gives his mercy freely and how this freely given mercy is received
by faith.
The first thing we are told is that a Canaanite woman who lives in this
land of Gentiles comes to Jesus. This is the only time in the NT that
the Canaanites are mentioned. Immediately we ought to remember all that
God has said about the Canaanites in the OT. Canaan was the son of Noah’s
son, Ham. The descendents of Canaan are called the Canaanites and from
the beginning they are a wicked and God hating people. They live in the
land of Canaan, which is modern day Israel/Palestine. It is the Canaanites
that God commands Israel to destroy. God tells them that the reason he
wants them destroyed is because of how wicked they are. They are idol
worshippers who actually sacrifice their children to their gods. They
consult mediums, engage in witchcraft and practice all kinds of sexual
perversions. God warns Israel to destroy them completely and to never
intermarry with them because they will turn their hearts away from God
and into the detestable practices they have engaged in. Well, if you know
the story of Israel you know that they did not destroy the Canaanites
and they did intermarry with them and as a result, they did practice all
the wickedness of the Canaanites.
If there were a group of people who you would least expect God to save,
it would be these people. If you were a Jewish Christian reading this
passage you would be shocked that a Canaanite woman had the audacity to
approach God’s Messiah. Based on the OT descriptions of the Canaanites,
the likelihood that God would be kind to a Canaanite is about the same
as God being kind to a Nazi prison guard or a pedophile or a terrorist.
Again, at first reading, it would appear that Jesus shares this sentiment.
But let’s look closely at what happens here to discover how God’s mercy
comes to this woman.
She comes to Jesus in desperate need. She is frantic because her daughter
is demon-possessed. I don’t know if there is a greater anguish than that
of a parent with a sick or injured child. But notice how she addresses
Jesus. She knows he is the Lord and that he is the promised, Jewish Messiah.
She knows that he is David’s greater Son whose kingdom will never end
and who God has sent to shepherd and care for his people Israel. How does
she know this? Jesus has never left the borders of Israel up to this moment.
Look back at Matthew 4: 23-25. "Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching
in their synagogues, preaching the good news of the kingdom, and healing
every disease and sickness among the people. News about him spread all
over Syria, and people brought to him all who were ill with various
diseases, those suffering severe pain, etc." Syria is the province
where Tyre and Sidon are located. Gentile people from the region where
this woman lived had come to Galilee to be healed and then had returned
home and told their friends and neighbors about Jesus. This woman knew
from these reports that Jesus was God’s Messiah and when she heard that
he was seen on the roads of Syria, she left her home to obtain his help.
But also notice that her request is that Jesus have mercy on her by healing
her child. To ask for mercy is to ask a person of higher rank and greater
resources to be kind to you by helping you in your trouble. It is asking,
not demanding. It is requesting help from a person who has the ability
but who is not obligated to help you in any way. When you have money in
your checking account, you don’t go to the bank, get on your knees, and
beg the teller to have mercy on you by giving you money out of your account.
You demand your money. When you’ve put in a 40-hour week, you don’t go
to your employer and beg him to give you your paycheck. If you are a landlord
you don’t beg your tenant to have mercy on you by paying you the rent.
Disobedient children ask parents for mercy. Guilty criminals ask judges
for mercy. Homeless people ask strangers for mercy. Asking for mercy implies
that the person being asked is under no obligation to help and in fact
may have good reason to not help.
Jesus, however, ignores her pleas for help. He turns his back on her
and walks away. He chooses to not immediately give her mercy, which he
has every right to do. He is under no obligation to be merciful. Jesus’
behavior is highly offensive to us. We live with the mistaken notion that
God is somehow obligated to be kind. We feel as John Paul Sartre, the
famous French existentialist, atheist philosopher did. When asked if he
was afraid to die and face God he said, "If there is a God he will
forgive me for that is his business." We are shocked when bad things
happen to us rather than being shocked that good things happen. We fail
to realize that God is free to have mercy on whom he wants and when he
wants. He is under no obligation. Now notice, this woman is not put off
by Jesus’ seeming indifference. She follows Jesus and his disciples. Her
need is so great and she is so convinced that only Jesus can help her
that she follows Jesus, crying out at the top of her voice, begging, "Jesus,
Son of David, have mercy on me, heal my daughter." The disciples
eventually become quite annoyed at her persistent pleas and command Jesus
to send her away. Now notice, Jesus stops and seems to obey the wishes
of the disciples. This is quite a remarkable scene. He stops and calls
out to the woman over the heads of his disciples, "I was sent only
to the lost sheep of Israel."
What in the world is Jesus saying? I thought God loved everybody. Doesn’t
John 3:16 say, "God so loved the world that he gave his one and only
Son?" Doesn’t Jesus himself say, at the end of this very gospel,
"Go and make disciples of every nation?" What in the world is
Jesus talking about? Why does he say this to this Canaanite woman? There
are several things that Jesus is saying. First, we have here what Dr.
Don Carson calls, the scandal of particularity. Whatever else Jesus means
by this he at least is indicating that God has a special affection for
certain people. Jesus’ mission is to come and to save a particular group
of people. This is the point at which people in our culture stumble over
the gospel of Christ. How can it be fair that God chooses to save certain
people and not others? Isn’t it the height of arrogance for anyone to
claim to be God’s "chosen ones"? Isn’t this kind of talk that
causes war and strife between people? I want you to know that this is
how God has always dealt with human beings. Listen to this statement from
Deuteronomy 10: 14-15, "To the Lord your God belong the heavens,
even the highest heavens, the earth and everything in them. Yet the Lord
set his affection on your forefathers and he loved them and he chose you,
their descendants above all the nations as it is today." God owns
the entire universe and everyone in it. He freely, sovereignly chose Abraham,
Isaac, Jacob, Moses and the entire nation of Israel out of and above all
the other nations. He could have chosen whomever he wanted, but he chose
to be gracious to the descendants of Abraham. God is not obligated to
be kind to anyone. No one deserves to be treated well. We all deserve
to be sent to hell. However, God freely, graciously decides to be kind
to some. Jesus tells this woman, the reason he is not helping her is because
he is sent only to the lost sheep of Israel. But again, why does he tell
this to her? This is especially confusing because we know that he has
already helped and healed Gentile people without saying anything like
this.
Second, he is stating something that is technically true of his ministry
while he lived on planet earth. God chose Abraham and promised to make
him into a great nation and to bless him and his descendants. God promised
King David that he would have a son that would reign over Israel forever.
All the promises in the OT are directed towards a particular group of
people, the nation of Israel, the descendants of Abraham. God is being
faithful to his promises to Israel by sending his son to Israel. Most
of Jesus’ ministry took place within the borders of national Israel and
was directed towards Jewish people. Jesus is saying what is repeatedly
said in the NT. The gospel is first for the Jew and then for the Gentile.
Salvation comes from the Jews because God told Abraham that he would bless
his descendants so that all the nations of the world would be blessed.
Jesus is reflecting that salvation begins with the Jews and then goes
to the Gentiles. He is not saying that he will only save Jewish people.
He is saying that the promises are being fulfilled to Israel first.
However, there is more to this statement than that. He is essentially
saying to this woman, "What makes you think that you, a Canaanite
woman, can receive mercy from the Messiah of the Jewish people? Don’t
you know that I was sent by God to the sheep who are lost, who belong
to my people Israel?" What makes this woman so confident that Jesus,
the Jewish Messiah will have mercy on her? Her persistence is not due
to her need but due to her absolute confidence that Jesus will be merciful
to a non-Jewish, Canaanite woman. She knows this for two reasons. First
she knows that Jesus has already healed many Canaanite people without
asking questions. But second, she understands something about mercy that
the Jewish leaders do not understand. We can see her understanding in
what takes place next.
Jesus has another audience in mind as he talks with this woman. Remember
that his Jewish disciples are standing right there watching and listening.
They believe that God saves only good, Jewish people or Gentiles who are
willing to become Jewish. What Jesus is about to do is to show them that
the "lost sheep who are part of Israel" are not just Jewish
people. He is engaged in showing them what the apostle Paul so clearly
says in the book of Romans, "Not all who are descended from Israel,
are Israel." Jesus is about to show, through this woman, that it
is "not through keeping the law that Abraham and his offspring received
the promise that he would be heir of the world, but through the righteousness
that comes by faith." Mercy is not given to people based on their
ethnic identity or upon their keeping certain laws but purely by God’s
decision to have mercy and their response of faith. The lost sheep of
Israel are not just good Jewish people but all who come to Christ like
this woman.
Jesus’ statement that he was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel does
not deter her. She doesn’t say as I have heard so many say when confronted
with God’s sovereignty in salvation, "What’s the use of doing anything.
If God saves whom he wants to save, then there is nothing I can do to
change his mind. There is no point to my trying." She walks through
the middle of the disciples who stand there with their mouths hanging
open at her audacity and falls at his feet and says, "Lord, help
me." The word used here for her falling on her knees is the word
that also means worship. It is what the disciples did in the boat after
Jesus walked on the water and saved Peter from drowning and stilled the
storm. She knows who Jesus is and she completely expects him to help her.
Jesus says another apparently discouraging thing to her. He says, "It
is not good to take the children’s bread and toss it to their dogs."
Jesus compares her to a dog. Again, he is asking her, "What makes
you think that the blessings I have come to bestow on the lost sheep that
are part of Israel should be given to you, a Canaanite woman?" Now
notice how she answers Jesus.
First, notice what she does not say. She does not say, "Who are
you calling a dog? You judgmental, narrow-minded, racist. I’m a person
just like your precious Jewish friends here. I don’t deserve to be treated
like this. What right do you have to call me a dog? Don’t you know that
God loves the everyone the same, that he doesn’t play favorites?"
She says, "Yes Lord, that is absolutely right. I am a dog. I know
that you have come to feed the children first. But the dogs get to eat
the crumbs that fall from the master’s table. The master feeds his dogs
and so yes, I am one of those dogs and so I know that you will feed me.
I know that you will help me." What this woman knows is that God
gives his mercy freely. He does not give his mercy to people based on
their race or their religious performance. Mercy is not earned. God is
not obligated to give mercy to anyone. He freely chooses to whom he will
be merciful and so why shouldn’t he be merciful to me is how the woman
reasons. "I qualify for mercy because I am a dog." So rather
than being discouraged by Jesus calling her a dog she is encouraged because
good masters feed their dogs and getting fed by the master is what matters,
not being served first. She doesn’t object to Jesus’ claim that God is
the one who decides who he will have mercy upon. She doesn’t argue with
him about the justice of God in choosing to save a particular group of
people. She knows that God’s mercy is freely given to undeserving sinners
and therefore she sees no reason why God should not be kind to her, undeserving
sinner that she is. She knows that Jesus has the right to call her a dog
because of who he is. She submits to his assessment of her spiritual condition.
She knows that the only qualification for salvation is being a sinner
and she qualifies.
This is exactly opposite from what the Jewish religious leaders thought.
They believe that the reason God is pleased with them and will accept
them is because of their parentage, they are descendants of Abraham and
because of how they live. They do not need mercy because God is obligated
to reward them because of who they are and what they have done. They are
certain God will not reward Canaanites because of who they are and what
they have done. They believe what the vast majority of human beings believe,
that God is obligated to reward them with heaven because they are so good.
God is like an employer. If you do your job, then he will pay you what
he owes you. If you don’t do your job, then he will not reward you. This
is the point at which so many people go wrong. God is not good to us because
we are obedient to him. Obedience is the fruit of mercy, not the cause
of it.
Jesus’ response is packed with emotion. He says, "O woman, you have
great faith! Your request is granted." Jesus is delighted with this
woman’s confident expectation that he will do what she asks. This is a
living example of Hebrews 11:6, "Without faith it is impossible to
please God because everyone who comes to God must believe that he exists
and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him." Or of Psalm 50:15,
"Call upon me in the day of trouble and I will answer you and you
will honor me." Jesus is so pleased with this woman’s faith because
in it she shows off how great and sufficient of a Savior he is. Jesus
is glorified by her persistence and by his answer to her prayer.
I want to think about what made this woman’s faith great? This woman
gives us a perfect picture of what saving faith looks like. First, she
was in a desperate situation and knew that only Jesus, the Son of David
could help her. She pursued no other options. Her heart and mind and will
were bent in only one direction, towards Jesus. She knew who he was and
she knew only he could help her daughter. She knew that there are no other
Saviors and there is no other salvation. Second, she was persistent because
she was absolutely confident that God would have mercy on her because
God’s mercy is freely given to sinners. She knew that no one obligates
God to give him or her mercy. God is completely free to give mercy to
whomever he wants and therefore there is no one who is beyond the reach
of his mercy. Third, she knew exactly who she was. She knew she was a
dog, a person who had no claim upon God. If God would have mercy it wouldn’t
be because of who she was or what she had done. Jesus could not offend
her because he couldn’t say anything about her worse than what she knew
herself to be. She never demands that he help her. She begs him and pleads
with him for mercy but she never demands. She knows she has no right to
demand, she’s a dog and dogs are dependent upon the kindness of their
master.
We also must ask how is it that she had this great faith? Certainly she
had heard of Jesus from friends and neighbors who had gone to see him
in Galilee. Perhaps she knew something of the Jewish Scriptures and of
the promises God made to bless all the nations through the Jewish people.
But, in view of what Jesus said earlier in Matthew, this woman’s faith
is an evidence of God’s mercy also. Jesus said in Matthew 11:27, "All
things have been committed to me by my Father. No one knows the Son except
the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom
the Son chooses to reveal him." And he said in 13:11, "The mysteries
of the kingdom of heaven has been given to you but not to them."
So this woman belongs to the lost sheep of Israel for whom Jesus came,
even though she is a Canaanite because God has chosen to have reveal himself
to her.
Why did Jesus deal with this woman in this fashion? Jesus healed many
other Gentile people and yet he never talked to any of them in this fashion.
Jesus’ dealing with her is an expression of his mercy. She claimed to
believe that he was the Messiah, God’s Savior. Jesus, by resisting her
entreaties and saying what he says to her shows that she really does believe
what she says. At any point we would not be surprised to hear her say,
"Just who do you think you are, ignoring me, saying you’ve only come
for the lost sheep of Israel, comparing me to a dog." But she never
disagrees with or challenges Jesus. She submits entirely to him because
she knows who he is. By requiring this woman to persist in her pleading
for mercy he confirmed her in her faith. She left Jesus with a faith stronger
than she came with because he required her to act on her faith for such
a long period of time. He required her to overcome obstacles before he
gave her what she requested because he wanted her to live in the joy of
his sovereign grace. Whose joy is greater, the person who is rescued from
the collapsed building five minutes after the earthquake strikes or the
one who is rescued only after three days of digging? When she experienced
mercy she knew it was hers and could not be taken from her. This woman
knows who she is and who Jesus is as a result of her trouble and tireless
pursuit of Jesus. If we never have trouble, if we never have to persist
in pursuing God for help, then we will never be sure if our hope is in
Christ or in our money or our health or our own abilities. Like this woman,
God wants us to know that Jesus is the Savior, not us or anyone else.
Right now God has given every person in here trouble so that you will
abandon hope in every other solution. He has put us in these circumstances
so that we will seek him for his mercy. He means for us to ask him for
mercy, not to demand mercy. You have done nothing to deserve his mercy.
There is no reason in you he is obligated to be merciful to you. Your
hope lies in knowing that he freely gives his mercy to sinners like you
and I. Your hope lies in your open acknowledgement of who you really are
and your persistent pursuit of Christ as the only one who can help you.
So, what can be done with an old heart like mine? Only Christ can change
me. What I need is mercy. So I will be like this woman who persists in
pursuing Christ, no matter what obstacles confront me. I will agree with
Jesus’ assessment of my spiritual condition and trust him to give me crumbs
of his grace that will deliver me from my love affair with sin and the
world.
Jesus conquers our hearts through his mercy because
- His mercy is given freely, to those who trust him for it
- And because…
II. His mercy is given lavishly (vv. 29-31)
Jesus is on the eastern shore of the Sea of Galilee in a region that
is primarily populated by non-Jewish or Gentile people. Great crowds of
people bring their sick and crippled and blind and mute to him and simply
lay them at his feet and he heals all who are brought to him. He pours
out the blessing of God on all who come to him. He doesn’t ask them who
they are. He doesn’t ask them to do anything to earn his favor. He simply
heals those who are brought to him. Jesus is not stingy in his mercy.
He does not hold out on those who will come to him. He is lavish with
his mercy. So come to him for salvation. Whatever sickness of soul you
have, come and he will lavish the resources of heaven on you. This is
what the apostle Paul says in Ephesians 3: 20-21, "Now to him who
is able to do immeasurably more than we ask or imagine according to his
power that is at work within us. To him be glory in the church and in
Christ Jesus forever and ever."
You cannot ask Jesus for too much mercy. He delights to pour out God’s
grace upon undeserving sinners so that we praise and honor him for his
mercy, just like the people he healed in this story. This is the reason
he is lavish in dispensing mercy, so that God is glorified in it. As John
Piper says, "God is not looking for people to work for him, so much
as he is looking for people who will let him work for them… The difference
between Uncle Sam and Jesus Christ is that the U.S. Army won’t enlist
you in his service unless you are healthy, and Jesus won’t enlist you
unless you are sick. Patients do not serve their doctors, they are served
by them."
Jesus conquers our hearts through his mercy because
- His mercy is given freely, to those who trust him for it
- His mercy is given lavishly
- And because…
III. His mercy is given compassionately (vv. 32-38)
I just want you to look at v. 32. Notice that Jesus is very aware of
what these people need and his compassion for them moves him to meet their
need. God’s compassion for his people moves him to act on their behalf
even before they ask him for help. As Jesus said in Matthew 6:32, "Your
heavenly Father knows that you need these things." When we worry
about our future we are simply calling into question the love of God for
us. God knows what we need and he knows exactly when we need it. Jesus
didn’t provide a meal for them on day 2 but he does on day 3. He knows
they need help at that moment in order to do what must be done, travel
from this remote place back home. This is just such a remarkable picture
of the attentiveness of Jesus to the needs of people. God will give exactly
what we need at exactly the right moment because his heart is full of
compassion for his people.
Jesus conquers our hearts through his mercy because
- His mercy is given freely, to those who trust him for it
- His mercy is given lavishly
- His mercy is given compassionately
© Copyright
2001 John Swanson.
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