Matthew: A Merciful Messiah (15:21-39)

This sermon was preached to Grace Church Guildford on 9 July 2023. The audio recording of the sermon can be found below along with the transcript.

What does a Christian look like? What background or characteristics do you expect a Christian to have? Hopefully, from these last two Sunday morning sermons, your mind at least goes for a moment to those nine characteristics we read of in Galatians 5. What does a follower of Jesus look like? Well, Paul tells us they have the fruit of the Spirit in their lives, that a Christian is someone who lives a life of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. That is what a Christian looks like! And yet, if we are honest, we often associate followers of Jesus with other things. Maybe, when you think of a Christian, you expect them to be someone who worked hard and got good grades at school, went to university and did well on their course, before getting a well-paid job that allows them to live a comfortable life in a nice town like Guildford. For you, a Christian is usually a member of the middle class, someone who has done well for themselves, and lives in relative comfort. Or perhaps when you think of a follower of Jesus, you think of someone who has a certain kind of family life. They were brought up in a stable home, with a mother and father who loved them, and siblings to play with. They meet a spouse at a young age and fall in love, before starting a beautiful family of their own and buying a Labrador. For you, a Christian normally comes from and is currently part of a family with close harmonious relationships. Or maybe you expect a Christian to have had good mental health, it is unlikely they will have ever struggled with anxiety or depression. Perhaps you even assume that they will normally be in good physical health, unlikely to develop a chronic condition or disease. Of course, we know such things can happen. But they are exceptions to the norm. For we expect most Christians to usually have good jobs, loving families, avoid serious struggles and the worst kinds of suffering. In short, we expect Christians to be living the good life, holding everything together.

However, when we turn to the Bible, we find a very different answer. If you were to read through this Gospel of Matthew noting down the kinds of people who became followers of Jesus, you would see that they rarely meet such expectations. For again and again, Matthew tells us those who follow Jesus are not mundane members of the middle class living uneventful and comfortable lives. But they are great sufferers, great strugglers, great sinners. He has told us stories of a group of poorly educated fishermen, a leading officer in the Roman army, a tax collector. Those who are demon possessed, blind and paralysed. Lepers, an old lady with incurable bleeding, as well as former prostitutes and thieves. If you were to gather all the people together in a room that Matthew tells us came to Christ, they would be the most interesting and colourful collection of people ever assembled in the history. And yet, in many ways, the person that comes to Christ in our passage tonight, is the most surprising of them all.

If you remember last week, in 15:1-20, Jesus debated a delegation of religious leaders who came from Jerusalem. They came to criticise Jesus’ disciples for failing to wash their hands. These Pharisees clearly thought that those who followed Jesus should be identified by their adherence to Jewish tradition. What does a Christian look like? Well, these religious leaders expected Jesus’ followers to look exactly like themselves. And yet, Jesus rejects any such expectations. Last week we heard him explain that his people were not to be recognised by their adherence to Jewish tradition, but to God’s truth. And that their moral purity would not merely be an external matter of their hands, but an internal issue of their hearts. In 15:1-20, Matthew taught us that Jesus’ followers would not look like the Pharisees. And so, in the rest of the chapter, he begins to show us what they will look like, starting with this startling and surprising story in 15:21-28. This evening, we will cover the whole second half of Matthew 15. However, we are going to mainly focus on this first story, on this encounter between Christ and this Canaanite, between the Lord and this lady. For we will see that this story is the key to understanding the message of the rest of the chapter. We will consider the story in two sections this evening: (1) A Condemned Canaanite Believes; (2) A Merciful Messiah Receives. And through this we finally see what a Christian, a follower of Jesus, looks like.

1.     A CONDEMNED CANAANITE BELIEVES

Sometimes geography matters. Where an event takes place can make all the difference to what it means. I’m not sure if you saw the news, but this week we had the three hottest days on record around the globe. That meant that the average temperature around the world was higher than any other time we know in history. However, where you were for this event really does matter. For example, here in the UK, it was a nice average of about 15C. But in China it hit 40C, in Spain 44C, and in Iran it exceeded 50C! Sometimes geography really does matter! And that is true in our story, indeed in our whole chapter, tonight. Where this story takes places, makes all the difference to what it means. Matthew flags this to us right at the beginning. Did you notice that earlier? Again and again, Matthew tells us where this event happens. In 15:21-22 we read: ‘Leaving that place, Jesus withdrew to the region of Tyre and Sidon. A Canaanite woman from that vicinity came to him, crying out...’ Matthew doesn’t want us to miss where Jesus encounters this woman and where she is from. As we heard last week, up to this point, Jesus has been ministering in Galilee, a rural region in the north of Israel. Galilee was seen to be a less sophisticated, less prosperous area. And what was worse, it was associated with Gentiles. That is what everyone who was not a Jew was called in Israel, they were called ‘Gentiles’. And there were many of them living in the region of Galilee. Indeed, Matthew highlighted this to us back in chapter 4, where he told us that Jesus fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah 9 by going with the Gospel to ‘Galilee of the Gentiles’. That’s what the region was nicknamed. Even though Galilee was inside the borders of Israel, it was filled with many who were from outside Israel, and so was seen as an impure place for true Jews to live, for there they would have to mingle with many from Gentile backgrounds.

Galilee is where Jesus has mainly ministered up to this point. And yet, in our story tonight, Matthew tells us Jesus goes one step further, leaves Galilee of the Gentiles to cross into the actual country of the Gentiles. Having rebuked the leaders of Israel, Jesus now leaves the land of Israel, goes beyond its borders, into the lands around the Gentile cities of Tyre and Sidon, where he encounters a woman from that country. Given all the surprising people Jesus has met so far in Matthew (e.g. tax collectors and sinners, lepers and even some Gentiles), we might think there is little left that can shock us. And yet, somehow Matthew manages to catch our attention once again. For in 15:22, he tells us this lady is ‘a Canaanite.’ Now this wasn’t actually a term used in New Testament times. From the version of this story in Mark 8, it seems that she was a Syrophoenician, that was the term used in those days to describe her ethnicity. And yet, Matthew doesn’t call her that, instead he calls her a Canaanite. And he does so not because this term was used at the time of the New Testament, but because it was used in the Old Testament. Canaanites were those living in the land before God’s people got there. They were a collection of clans condemned by God for their great sins of idolatry and sexual immorality and judged for those sins through the conquest of Joshua. In the book of Joshua, the people of Israel were given the land and told to wage war against the Canaanites, to drive them out from it, to even destroy their cities and slaughter their citizens as God’s judgment upon them. To be Canaanite was to be condemned by God, under his just judgement and an enemy of both him and his people.

In this way, while this woman is in a different biological position during to her ancestry, she really represents all of us, who find ourselves in a similar spiritual situation due to our sin. For the Bible tells us we are all under God’s condemnation, all deserve his just judgement, we are all born as enemies of both him and his people. For we have rejected him, refused to live by his laws. We have all sinned, went our own way, ignored his right to rule over us. And so, like the Canaanites, the Bible says that we deserve to be destroyed, judged and punished, driven out of all of God’s good blessings, and suffer under his righteous wrath forever. And yet, the story of this women brings us great hope and comfort. For while Matthew tells us that she belonged to the greatest group of enemies that God’s people ever had, here we see her come to Christ for mercy, believe in Christ as her Lord. If you were to think of what a follower of Jesus might look like, you would never have imagined in your wildest dreams that it would have been someone like this lady. And yet, here we see a condemned Canaanite believe. And if we see her believe, we must conclude anyone can believe. Anyone can come to Jesus regardless of what sin or situation is in your past, no matter who your ancestors are or what they have done, you can receive mercy if you come to Jesus.

In 15:22 we read that this lady comes to Christ crying out: [READ]. At the end of the story, Jesus highlights the great faith that this took. It took great faith for her to name him as Lord. Did you notice that every time this lady speaks in our passage, that is what she calls Jesus? In 15:22, 25, 27, she makes him her master, calls this Jewish Messiah her Lord. And as we shall see, she does this despite his apparent reluctance to attend to her, care for her. That is why Jesus highlights her faith to us in 15:28. She has no right to make him her master, for she’s a Canaanite. She has no real encouragement to do so, as he explains he came to concentrate on serving and saving the Jews. And yet she persists in coming to him, never gives up believing in him, and so demonstrate her ‘great faith’. That is what Jesus says she had. Back in 14:31, after Peter fails to walk on water, Jesus says that Peter has ‘little faith’. At the start of the chapter, we saw the religious leaders had no faith. The very people who we expect to be Jesus’ greatest followers, his disciples and the religious leaders, don’t seem to measure up. But in this Canaanite woman, we meet a follower of great faith. And so, see that sometimes the most unlikely converts are the greatest believers.

Friends, do you see here what a follower of Jesus looks like? Christians do not come from a certain kind of socio-economic background, or stable family situation, they do not all enjoy comfortable and suffering free lives. No, the only thing that Christians all have in common is that we are all born with the same sin problem, and all believe in the same Saviour. That are the two things Christian have in common, like this women, we are all found to be condemned and we all have faith in Christ. If you are here this evening, and struggling with your mental health, coming out of a stressful family situation, suffering with a long-term illness, struggling at school or work, see here that none of that matters when it comes to the issue of whether you are a Christian or not. The only thing that matters, is whether you believe. Whether you, like this lady, will come tonight to Jesus for mercy, ask him for his help. For we see here the sheep that form Jesus’s flock come from many different backgrounds and situations, and the only thing they have in common is their faith. Even though this lady was a condemned Canaanite, because she believes, she is a follower of Jesus and so receives mercy from this Messiah. A Condemned Canaanite Believes.

2.     A MERCIFUL MESSIAH RECIEVES

Or does he? For at first glance, it seems like Jesus doesn’t want anything to do with this lady. After she cries to him for help in 15:22, we read in 15:23, ‘Jesus did not answer a word.’ As Charles Spurgeon puts it, ‘The one who could heal her daughter with a word, will not speak a word.’ And the situation doesn’t seem to improve at all as the passage goes on, for after his disciples urge Jesus to send this lady away, to stop her continual crying, rather than rebuke them for failing to have compassion, as we might expect, Jesus enters into a conversation with this lady in which rather than offering to help her, he explains why he won’t help her. In 15:24, he highlights the fact that his mission as the Messiah was to save the sheep of Israel, to come and rescue God’s people, not enemies like the Canaanites. Then in 15:26, Jesus uses a proverbial saying that likens this lady to a dog, an offensive term that Jew’s used to describe Gentiles in those days, as dogs were unclean animals that were scavengers in towns and villages, rather than the beloved house pets they are for us today.

I’m not sure about you, but I certainly found myself a bit disorientated when reading this story, for the things that Jesus is saying seems more likely to come out of the mouths of religious leaders like the Pharisees, rather than the compassionate and merciful Jesus that we have come to know in Matthew so far. And you know what, I think that is the point. I think Jesus is supposed to sound like a Pharisee here. I think he is deliberately taking the views and arguments of people like the Pharisees, and even his own disciples who don’t want anything to do with this lady, and presents these to her so that we can all see how Jesus will burst beyond the expectations that Jews had for their Messiah, how his mercy will be for even the worst of God’s enemies. By withholding his mercy for a moment, Jesus reminds us just how amazing it is.

Remember, Jesus has already healed Gentiles in Matthew. In chapter 8, in a story that is similar to this one in so many ways, Jesus is approached by a Roman Centurion, who calls him Lord and tells him about his sick servant. On that occasion, Jesus does the exact opposite of what he does here, for he offers to go and heal the servant (and so no one can accuse Jesus of being reluctant to care for the Gentiles). I think in both stories, he is making the same ultimate point, albeit in a different way, showing that he is willing to extend his mercy to Gentiles, even the enemies of God’s people like the Romans. For in both stories, Jesus ends up healing with a word from a distance. And in both stories, Jesus commends the faith of a Gentile, for in 8:10 we read: ‘Truly I tell you, I have not found anyone in Israel with such great faith. I say to you that many will come from the east and the west, and will take their places at the feast with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven.’ Jesus has already shown beyond all doubt that he will receive Gentiles. And so, what we see him do with this lady is an act of testing her faith, not trampling on it. It may seem like he is turning her away, but really he is spurring her on. Like any good teacher, Jesus is challenging this lady to overcome opposing views, playing a kind of Devil’s advocate, to teach this lady, his disciples, and all of us, that he is a Messiah who will have mercy on all who believe in him.

O brother or sister, if you find yourself in this lady’s situation tonight, if you are coming to Jesus for help, and have not yet received it, do not lose heart, do not think that he does not hear you, do not think that he will not help you. Even when Christ’s mouth is silent, his ear is open. Even when God seems to be sending you challenge after challenge, he is only doing it to strengthen you, to test you and train you to trust in him. As Peter put it in 1 Peter 1:6-7, ‘In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.’

Grace Church, do you see that faith, when it is tested, doesn’t grow weaker, but actually grows stronger? That our faith strengthens and increases with every obstacle that it has to overcome. That believing is like a muscle, it needs to be stretched and strained if it is ever going to grow strong. This lady is the greatest believer in the whole book of Matthew, she is the only person that Jesus openly declared to have ‘great faith’. And yet,do you not see what made her faith so great? How she achieved such amazing trust in Jesus? Is it not because her trust was tested, her faith challenged? It is because she had to plead with Christ, even persuade Christ, that she came to believe so strongly in Christ. And that is what we too must do. Like this woman, we must keep crying out to him, keep coming before him and pleading for help, even persuading him in prayer. If you go away and read the Psalms, is that not what you see there? As David or the other authors, plead with God in prayer, even try to persuade him to act in their case, to come to their defence. For it is through such testing, that our Lord is strengthening our faith, perhaps even to the point that like this lady, we too will have great faith in him.

In 15:21-28, Jesus begins to show us that he is a merciful Messiah who receives all who come to him in faith. And seeing this, is the key to understanding the rest of what is otherwise a rather confusing chapter. Were you a bit confused when we read the rest of the chapter together earlier? Perhaps did you experience some Deja Vu? I hope so, for what we read in 15:29-38 is an awful lot like what we looked at a few weeks ago in 14:13-21. In both passages, Jesus is by the shores of the Sea of Galilee. In both passages, hordes come to him for healing. And in both passages, Jesus proceeds to feed a huge crowd, in Matthew 14 it was 5,000, and here it is 4,000 men.

Why does Matthew spend so much time telling us similar stories? Why place these two similar events so closely together in his book? Well, as I mentioned earlier, I think Christ’s encounter with the Canaanite is the key to answering such questions. For having established that he is a merciful Messiah to all who believe in him, to anyone who comes to him, be they Jew or Gentile, Jesus now proves this beyond all doubt, for he goes and does exactly what he did for the people of Israel, only this time he does it in the land of the Gentiles. In case you missed it when we read the passage earlier, see again that geography matters. For Jesus performs these miracles of healing and feeding not in Jewish, but in Gentile territory. There in 15:29, we read that Jesus sits down beside the Sea of Galilee. However, it is clear that he remains within Gentile territory, on the Gentile side of the lake, for it is only at the end of the chapter we are told that he returns by boat to the ‘vicinity of Magadan’, on the Jewish side of the lake. The are two other key clues that Jesus remains in Gentile territory in the rest of the chapter. The first is the response of the crowd to the healings in 15:31, for we are told there that after seeing the mute speak, the lame walk and the blind see, the crowd ‘praised the God of Israel’. That is, not their Gentile gods, but the God of their neighbours, Israel. Similarly, in 15:37, the word used for basket at the feeding of the 4000 is distinctive and different from that used for the baskets at the feeding of the 5000. There the word referred to small baskets unique to the Jewish people, whereas here a word for the more general baskets that the Gentiles used is referenced. Here in Matthew 15, Jesus is healing and feeding the Gentiles in the exact same way as he healed and fed Israel in Matthew 14. He literally takes the children’s bread and gives it to the dogs, for he feeds these 4000 Gentiles the same meal as he fed those 5000 Jews: bread and fish.

Here we see that the crumbs mercifully given by this Messiah from his table, are more than sufficient to feed thousands. That is how great his mercy is. And as Matthew goes on to tell us through the rest of his book, his mercy will later be sufficient to save the world. For on the cross, Jesus will die for the sins of the world, die to purchase for himself a people for his own possession from every tribe, tongue, people and nation. And at the end of the book, in Matthew 28, he will send the disciples, these men who wanted to send this Gentile away that day, he will send them away into the Gentile world with the good news of the Gospel, in order to make disciples of all nations. So that that prophecy we heard at the beginning of our service in Isaiah 25:6, might be fulfilled, for on a mountain in a future day, our Lord will prepare ‘a feast of rich food for all peoples....’ As surely as he did that day, when he provided a meal for more than 4,000 gentiles by the shores of the Sea of Galilee.

We have thought about what followers of Jesus look like. But what about the church? What should God’s people, the church, look like when it comes together? I hope you see this evening that far from looking like a get together of the local golf club, or reunion of an elite school, or a gathering of all those who have their families and lives perfectly ordered and immaculately arranged, this gathering of God’s people, a local church, a group of Christians, should look a little bit more like an A&E waiting room. Have you been to A&E lately? You always end up with a very odd assortment of people in A&E, particularly if you are there in the middle of the night. You see those who are well off and those who are not, those who speak English and those who don’t, those who have complicated histories and long backstories, and those who have just fell off their bike and hurt their wrist. An A&E waiting room is a great horde of the unwashed masses all huddled together. All there because they are in need and have come to ask for help, for healing. And that is exactly what the church is, a group of people from an assortment of backgrounds, all coming together to Christ for help, for healing. In many ways, a local church, God’s people, should resemble an A&E waiting room. Or perhaps even better, resemble this gathering by the shores of the Sea of Galilee. As those from many different nations came to first be healed by Christ, and then feast with him. For indeed, that meal on the mountain that day, gives us just a glimpse of the feast that we are all invited to on the final day, when people from all kinds of backgrounds, those who have been gathered in from every tribe, tongue, language and nation, sit down to feast with the merciful messiah who receives everyone who believes in him, who comes to him for mercy.