“GREAT FAITH FOR GOD'S GREAT LOVE”

Matthew 15:21-28

It's difficult to listen to the words of today's text without feeling a bit uncomfortable about the conversation that took place between Jesus and the Canaanite woman. The way in which the Lord spoke to her appears to be quite insensitive. First, He refuses to acknowledge her plea for mercy. Then He says that His primary focus was to reach out to the Jewish people, not to the Gentiles, of which she was one. And then, perhaps most disturbing of all, He says to this woman, “It is not right to take the children's bread and throw it to the dogs.” Out of all the passages of Bible, this seems to be the most out of character with the loving, gracious picture of God which we have come to know. How do we explain the Lord's actions here?

Well, in truth, Jesus was not being insensitive at all. In fact, a careful examination of the text reveals that, at no point, did He out rightly refuse to help her. On the contrary, with each one of His actions towards her, He drew her closer and closer to Him, thereby increasing her faith, her dependence, upon His mercy and compassion.

You see, God never refuses to help His children—that's the bottom line. And the message of today's text is that our Lord wants us to be absolutely convinced of that fact.

For, perhaps we've lost sight of that fact in our lives- that God is more ready to answer than we are to ask. Like the disciples in the text, we are prone to impatience. We have a certain agenda to keep. We have places to go; we have responsibilities to attend to. We don't like unnecessary distractions. Here, this Canaanite woman appeared on the scene, following them, raising her voice in agony as they went on their way—like a child who continually pesters a parent for attention, or like a phone call from a troubled friend just as your heading out the door, or the homeless person on the street who asks you for spare change.

“A nuisance” – that's what the disciples thought. Jesus couldn't be bothered with that right now. In fact, he really shouldn't have to be bothered with this kind of thing ever. This is Jesus, after all. He can't be expected to waste His time with every little, insignificant thing that comes along.

At times, we can believe that very thing. I once heard a well-meaning Christian express the belief that God can't be bothered with the little problems in our lives. Those minor, day-to-day concerns should be worked out on your own; you should only go to God with the big problems. And so we fail to cast all of our cares upon Him. We fail to pray without ceasing. Or perhaps our prayers are only half-hearted rituals in which we go through, because we think that nothing's going to come of them anyway.

People, this is where we need to learn a valuable lesson from the Canaanite woman. She didn't give up. She didn't become discouraged. She did not turn away even though it appeared that the Lord was not listening. Here, Jesus' own disciples were more than ready to resign the matter to being a lost cause: “Send her away, for she keeps crying out after us.” But this Canaanite, this religious outcast in the eyes of God's chosen people, the Jews, persisted. And her plea was answered.

Now, why did the Lord grant her request? That is an important question for us to us to consider. For, human reason would tell us that Christ healed her daughter because He admired her bold and tenacious character. But that's not it at all. In fact, the very opposite is the case. “Woman,” Jesus said, “great is your faith!” That's why her prayer was answered, because of her faith.

And where did that great faith come from? Did it spring up from a strong-willed personality? Not at all. Faith doesn't flow out of our own strength or will. Faith, rather, is a spiritual gift that can only be granted by God Himself. And, please listen carefully—the true nature of a great faith is that it does not rely upon human strength and courageous character.

Too many people look upon faith is something that you have to supply in order to close the deal on God's heavenly contracts. It's as if to say, “If you believe hard enough, then your wishes will come true”; or, like a faith healer who preys upon his victims with the proviso, you can be healed IF you have enough faith.

How many people have been led to believe that the reason why they suffer so is because they didn't have the wherewithal inside of them to merit God's blessings?

Instead, a genuinely great faith asks: “Do you trust that God already loves you as perfectly as He possibly can, with the kind of love that you can neither earn nor deserve, and that He wants nothing more than to shower you with His richest blessings—all for the sake of what Jesus Christ has done in your stead?” People, that kind of helpless, unworthy, total dependence is what constitutes a great faith.

Recall the words of the text. Jesus said, “It is not right to take the children's bread and to throw it to the dogs.” Translation: God's children, the Jews, even though they had sorely rejected the Lord, could not simply be written off as a lost cause. God still loved them dearly, is what Christ was saying. And if that is the kind of compassion which God had for those who rejected His covenant and murdered the prophets—if He still desired to feed them with His grace, and not deprive them of their spiritual nourishment, so as to simply toss it aside like so many table scraps, leaving them to starve—if that's how God treats those who have mistreated Him, then how can we ever doubt that His faithful love and compassion for sinners such as we?

The gift of salvation is ours. The unconditional forgiveness of sins is our banquet. “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change,” (James 1:17).

The disciples may have missed that point at the time, but this Canaanite woman didn't. This outcast, this woman from a so-called heathen nation, with all of the odds working against her, trusted in the fact that GOD'S LOVE KNEW NO BOUNDS. He would never deny her plea for mercy. Even it would be only crumbs that fall to her, she would consider those crumbs to be more than enough to supply her with what she needed. Even the leftovers would be enough. She would be content to get by with that; for the love of God is so awesome and powerful, that even a tiny, little bit would sufficient to effect her daughter's cure and uphold a worried mother's faith.

But God never gives us just table scraps, does He? He doesn't give us left-overs, bits and pieces, faint glimmers of hope to cling to. Rather, God grants us the fullness and the richness of His grace. We see that so clearly in the gift of His Son, Jesus Christ, to us. And if God gave Himself so completely to us, we can be confident that He will be there to more than supply all of our other needs as well.

People, we will never pray as faithfully as we should, or can, until we come to the faithful realization that 1) God wants to bless us abundantly; and 2) that nothing is standing in the way (namely, our sin) nothing is standing in the way of Him lavishing those blessings upon us because Jesus shed His blood on the cross has cleansed us from all sin.

And when we pray in that spirit, we will not be dissuaded or discouraged even if, at first, it appears that the Lord is turning a deaf ear toward our needs. There is no concern that is too small for our Lord to be concerned about. There is no problem too big for our Lord to solve. Christ answered this woman's plea and delivered her daughter from demon possession—a catastrophic situation indeed! Measure this against your own worries and concerns. Does God love you any less?

Therefore, if the Lord does see fit to delay His answer toward us, don't ever chalk it up to a lack of concern on His part. If anything, look upon those times as the occasions when God is demonstrating His gracious power over against our self-reliance. You have not been forgotten in the distribution of the Bread of Life. Dear Christian, great is the gift of faith God has granted you. Be it done for you as you desire, for Jesus' sake.

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