Faith For Bread We Don't Deserve

[0:00] And while we are gathered here in this place on earth, the angels are crying, Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord God Almighty.

[0:13] ! certainly worthy of the praises of his people, the praises of stars and galaxies and creatures alike, the God that made all things.

[0:45] What a God. Who is this God that he would regard us mere mortals, that he would allow us to approach him and sing praises to him, sinners though we are, that he would preserve his word, which will remain when the world passes away.

[1:12] His word lasts forever. And so, as we come to open our Bibles to Mark chapter 7, it is not just any other book on the bookshelf, but the very word of God.

[1:29] Peter might have told Mark his account, and Mark might have wrote it down, but the Holy Spirit inspired these words. And so, Lord, the great God and creator of all things, would you prepare our hearts as your word is read and opened to us, please, by your Spirit, the very Spirit that hovered over creation and that rose Jesus from the dead, would your very Spirit illuminate your word to us and open our hearts.

[2:06] God, you are great, and may you be glorified in our presence, in our gathering today. May you be glorified in our singing, in our praying, and in reading of your word.

[2:21] We pray in Jesus' holy name. Amen. Mark chapter 7 from verse 24. And from there Jesus arose and went away to the region of Tyre and Sidon.

[2:40] And he entered the house and did not want anyone to know, yet he could not be hidden. But immediately a woman whose little daughter had an unclean spirit heard of him and came and fell down at his feet.

[2:54] Now the woman was a Gentile, a Syrophoenician by birth, and she begged him to cast the demon out of her daughter.

[3:06] And he said to her, Let the children be fed first, for it's not right to take the children's bread and throw it to the dogs. But she answered him, Yes, Lord.

[3:19] Yet even the dogs under the table eat the children's crumbs. And he said to her, For this statement you may go your way.

[3:30] The demon has left your daughter. And she went home and found the child lying in bed and the demon gone. This is the word of God. And may he bless the reading to us.

[3:44] Well, I know a few of us in here perhaps have dogs. John's not here. That's the point where John Lucas would have jumped up.

[3:58] Lewis. James. But think about this. Think about this woman with a little daughter who is in desperate need of help.

[4:11] I imagine every one of us this morning, though we might not all identify with what it's like to have a dog. I didn't grow up with a dog. But I imagine every single one of us this morning knows what it's like to have someone we care about being in some kind of trouble.

[4:26] Some kind of desperate need. Some kind of situation where we wish we could help. Have you ever felt that kind of burden? Where you're anxious and restless.

[4:39] You feel like you're looking in all directions. Praying for help and wishing someone or something could help. Maybe you're still feeling that for someone right now.

[4:51] I remember that feeling many times, different ways. I remember being in the out-of-hours clinic and being thankful for the people who have given their lives to medicine, to train.

[5:05] I remember thinking, I don't care who they are. If they can help, I'm really grateful. I don't care who they are, what they believe, what their background is. If they can help, I'm really grateful for them.

[5:16] And I remember thinking as well, sitting in the hospital with Jesus, not with Jesus, that would be amazing. The hospital would be cleared. I remember sitting in the hospital with someone else and thinking to myself, if Jesus was on this earth, all you had to do was go to Jesus.

[5:38] Just find Jesus and everything will be okay. And we're in that situation, in this gospel. All you had to do in this world 2,000 years ago, just find Jesus and everything will be okay.

[5:53] And this woman hears something of Jesus where she thinks, all I need to do is just find this man, Jesus. If there was someone who could help your loved one, perhaps a specialist, perhaps they were the only one who could help and you know that they could help, what if you came to that person for your loved one and they appeared to be rude at first?

[6:21] Would you then say, oh, well, fine then. I don't want your help. Would you say that if it was the only option? What if you went to this person and they said, well, I'm afraid you're not the kind of person I trained to help.

[6:38] Would you take offense and leave or would you persist? What if you heard that this very person, the specialist who can help your loved one, just happened to be in your country and in your area on holiday, they just happened to be visiting.

[6:58] This specialist from Boston or wherever and you think they're here and my loved one needs help and you went to find them and you found them and disturbed them on their holiday but they said to you, listen, I'm not here to serve Scotland.

[7:15] My job is in my country. Would you just apologize and leave them alone if you knew that they were the only one that could help? What would you do? I'm not saying these examples exactly match the situation in our passage but I just want to put us in the shoes of this woman who's trying to find help for her daughter.

[7:36] In order to understand what's going on here, we need to get over a few hurdles and one of the hurdles is the offense that we might take at what Jesus said here. But maybe we don't find this offense at this statement of Jesus.

[7:51] Maybe we don't take offense at it. Maybe we have enough of a picture of Jesus that we automatically think there must be some reasonable explanation for him to say this. Even so, I want you to imagine this for a moment.

[8:05] Imagine that you were asking a person if they'd heard about Jesus, right? Just one of your neighbors or friends or whatever. You were asking somebody if they had heard about Jesus and he says, No, I don't know anything about Jesus.

[8:18] And you says, Okay, let me share something with you. And you shared this passage and this alone. This was the only passage that you ever shared with this person.

[8:31] This was the only passage that this person ever heard of about Jesus. Would you be comfortable with that? Or would you say, You need to know some other things.

[8:42] Because we might think, Okay, well, Jesus, there must be a reason for him to say this. But if this was the only passage in the entire Bible about Jesus, would we be comfortable with that?

[8:54] We need to feel the awkwardness of this statement. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to understand that on the surface, Jesus is referring to her and her daughter as dogs.

[9:09] Now, we can talk about the Greek word here and how it's not the usual term for a wild dog. It's a diminutive term, meaning little dog or a house pet. But a dog is still a dog.

[9:23] And so, to understand this, we need to, in some way, get over the hurdle of being offended by asking ourselves, do we have the right to be offended? Whatever Jesus meant, did this woman have any right to be offended?

[9:41] Do we think more of ourselves than we ought to? Because, imagine Jesus said this in our culture. He would be cancelled. Jesus would be cancelled for saying this.

[9:54] And not only would he be cancelled, but our culture would feel some sense of entitlement that Jesus ought to help them. They would feel entitled to his help as if they had a right to it.

[10:07] And so, before opening up what this is about, like we saw in our reflections on Mephibosheth, we need to shake off any sense of pride or entitlement and realise that none of us have any right to be at the king's table eating bread anyway.

[10:28] This woman recognises this. This woman recognises she's got no right to ask for any bread from Jesus. Jesus does not owe anyone anything. He doesn't owe any of us anything.

[10:42] And so, think about this, right? You might know this person, you might not. Consider the point from the great 11th century theologian Anselm of Canterbury. He was the Archbishop of Canterbury, a good site better than the one just now.

[11:00] Anselm of Canterbury and his excellent work Cardeus Homo, which means Why the God Man? He uses a dialogue format with a fictional character aptly named Bozo.

[11:13] So, Anselm's having a conversation with Bozo on Why God Became Man. And he says this, he says, God owes no man anything, but every creature owes God.

[11:26] And he goes on to talk about how satisfaction ought to be proportionate to the guilt and that man is unable to accomplish this. Man cannot accomplish the satisfaction proportionate to his guilt.

[11:42] And so, Anselm asks Bozo, tell me, then, what payment do you make for your sin? What payment do you make for your sin? And Bozo says, well, repentance, a broken and contrite heart, self-denial, various bodily sufferings, pity and giving and forgiving and obedience.

[12:04] And then Anselm says, well, what do you give God in all of these? Bozo replies, do I not honor God when for love and fear and heartfelt contrition I give up worldly joy and despise amid abstinence and toils the delights and ease of this life and submit obediently to him, freely bestowing my possessions and giving to and releasing others?

[12:29] Do I not honor God in all of these things? And Anselm says, when you render anything to God which you owe him, irrespective of your past sin, you should not reckon this as the debt which you owe for your sin.

[12:47] But you owe God every one of those things which you have mentioned. And he goes on to say, but what do you give to God by obedience which is not owed to him already?

[12:58] Already. Since he demands from you all that you are and have and can become. How then do you pay God for your transgression?

[13:12] And Bozo says, if in justice I owe God myself in all my powers even when I do not sin, I have nothing left to render to him for my sin.

[13:25] And so Anselm is saying, everything that you have and are and can become you owe to God anyway even before you sin.

[13:37] And so how can you offer anything for your sin when you already owe God everything before you sin? And Bozo says, I have nothing left to render to him for my sin.

[13:49] And Anselm says, exactly. That is the point. Exactly. You've got nothing that you can give to God that you don't already owe him. God does not owe us anything and we owe God everything even before we sin.

[14:02] And as such we could never pay for our sin because we have nothing to offer in payment. Yet God became man in order to satisfy the payment which man owed God but only God could pay.

[14:15] That's Anselm's point. It's atonement. Jesus in verse 24, he arose and went away to the region of Tyre and Sidon.

[14:30] You see, as we go through this passage we need to understand that Jesus doesn't owe anyone anything but we owe him everything even before we sin. And so Jesus arose and went away to the region of Tyre and Sidon.

[14:44] Anyone who knows our Bible remember Tyre and Sidon? What's that place? In the previous chapter, chapter 6, we saw the schemes of Herod's wife, Herodias, to behead John the Baptist and we explored that John was like Elijah and Herodias was like who?

[15:04] If Herod is like King Ahab, Herodias is like Jezebel. And where does Jezebel come from? Tyre. She's a Phoenician princess, the daughter of the king of Tyre and Sidon.

[15:20] This is not a place that Jews want to go and this is not a place that gets along with the Israelites. In fact, Josephus, the first century Jewish historian, also says, among the Phoenicians, the Tyrians are notoriously our bitterest enemies.

[15:40] The bitterest enemies of the Jews are in Tyre and Sidon. And yet, this is where Jesus chose to withdraw with his disciples and he entered the house and didn't want anyone to know, yet he could not be hidden.

[15:55] And no matter how this world tries to shut Jesus up, he cannot be hidden. You can't hide the Son of God. His fame spread even to this region.

[16:07] Now, although the reason given for why they were going there was for some kind of anonymity so that they could rest, perhaps, there is a biblical pattern that we learn from that at times in Israel's history, if a prophet left the land of Israel and went to a foreign nation, even the enemies of Israel, it was a warning sign to Israel because they had not been responding to God so God would now go to the non-Jews and give them an opportunity to respond.

[16:37] This is a warning. For instance, you remember the story of Jonah. He was sent out of the land to go to Nineveh. Now, why did he run the other way?

[16:49] Well, perhaps he knew something of the warning that if he's leaving the land and going to Nineveh, the enemies of Israel, they might respond to God and that wouldn't be a good thing for Israel if their enemies were saved.

[17:07] And we get this picture as well throughout the book of Acts we see it particularly at the end of Acts in Acts chapter 28 when Paul Paul quotes Isaiah about the Jews not listening and then he says, therefore let it be known to you that this salvation of God has been sent to the Gentiles.

[17:25] They will listen. And so there's a shadow of warning in Jesus going to this region because contextually many of the Jews, especially the leaders in this story so far, have demonstrated the lack of faith and a rejection of God's Son, the Messiah.

[17:42] There's been a developing theme where the Jews are rejecting the Messiah and now he's turning to an enemy nation. Now, there's also this theme developing in Mark where Jesus is now focusing on his own disciples.

[17:58] More than the crowds, the things that he has been doing and saying is for them to understand particularly, we get this developing theme that he wants the disciples to understand because they are the chosen witnesses to tell the world yet they don't know it yet.

[18:16] Verse 25, immediately a woman whose little daughter had an unclean spirit, she heard of him and she came and she fell down at his feet.

[18:27] Verse 26, she was a Gentile, a Syrophoenician by birth. Now, we saw back in chapter 3 that great crowds followed him, some being from around the region of Tyre and Sidon.

[18:40] So, perhaps it was through them that she heard. But notice this woman's posture. This woman is a Gentile, Syrophoenician by birth. She's from Tyre and Sidon, an enemy nation.

[18:53] She has nothing to do with the Jews. She knows what the Jews think of them and yet look at her posture coming to Jesus. It would be very unusual for a Syrophoenician to do this to a Jew and for a woman to approach a man in this way unless he was someone with some sort of power and authority and she was begging for mercy or favor.

[19:18] This says a lot about her view of Jesus, which is incredible in the book of Mark. So far in Mark's gospel, we've hardly seen someone with this high view of Jesus.

[19:32] She begged him to cast the demon out of our daughter. How many of us with a loved one in desperate need would not beg for help from someone who could?

[19:47] If they appeared rude or if they tried to palm us off, would we so easily be deterred or would we beg? In verse 27, he said to her, let the children be fed first.

[20:01] It's not right to take the children's bread and throw it to the dogs. Verse 28, but she answered him, yes, Lord, but even the dogs under the table eat the children's crumbs.

[20:16] Now, when we get to these verses, it's very easy to pass by the word bread. And focus on the word dog. Forgetting that Jesus recently did a very big bread-feeding miracle for the Jews.

[20:34] The Jews who are the children at the table in this little parable. And also, remember at the end of chapter 6, near the end of chapter 6, Mark mentioned in 6.52 that even the disciples did not understand about the loaves.

[20:52] Even the disciples didn't understand about the bread. And yet, here is a non-Jewish woman from enemy territory who demonstrates both great understanding without explanation and great faith without presumption.

[21:09] In the context of Mark, it's surprising to see anyone understanding Jesus like this, let alone a non-Jewish woman. She is putting not only the Jewish Pharisees to shame, but she is putting the disciples to shame as well.

[21:26] It's also surprising to see such faith in Jesus based on so little exposure. Think about how much the Jews saw and heard of Jesus compared with this woman, and yet you see such surprising faith based on so little exposure under the table.

[21:48] Compared with the feast of revelation, the Jews were being served at the table. So far in Mark's gospel, the Jews are being served a feast of revelation at the table, being served, but not taking it.

[22:03] They were turning their noses up like a rich, spoiled kid who thinks he deserves better. And yet here is a woman, like a dog under the table, excited for even a crumb.

[22:17] See how the context really helps us understand what's going on here? We've got Jesus doing these incredible things in Israel to the Jews, incredible bread-related miracles, feeding them, feasting them, and they don't understand about the bread, they don't understand about Jesus, despite the feast, and yet here is a woman with great faith, even for a crumb.

[22:45] Now this business about the term dog, there's a few things to consider and remember. Mark is writing Peter's account, and Peter had a front row seat to this story, and yet he said later in his letter, 1 Peter 2 22, he said of Jesus, he committed no sin, neither was there deceit in his mouth.

[23:04] So at the very least, we must maintain that Jesus never sinned. No matter what we think about this statement, Jesus did not sin, neither with his actions, nor with his mouth.

[23:15] We also need to remember, we can easily forget at this point, that Jesus is a rabbi, he's a teacher. When he makes statements and talks and parables, he's teaching.

[23:28] We might think that he's just on holiday and he has a wee throwaway insult, but he's actually a teacher, and so he's trying to teach something. We already know from Mark that Jesus was a teacher unlike anyone else.

[23:41] Chapter 1, they were all amazed, saying, what is this? A new teaching with authority? In every chapter of Mark, crowds are coming to him not just for healing, but also to hear him teach.

[23:52] And even in his hometown of Nazareth, where they rejected him in chapter 6, they were still amazed at his wisdom. And Jesus often used controversial methods, whether it was healing someone on the Sabbath, or calling out the leaders, or confounding the rulers and Pharisees, saying things in controversial ways, and teaching many people in parables.

[24:17] He often invited people to ask more. He who has ears, let him hear. And so, we need to remember when Jesus says something like this, he's a teacher.

[24:29] He's trying to teach something. It's a method. We also have this growing theme that he is teaching the twelve specifically. More and more these chapters have been zooming in on what the apostles are learning or not learning.

[24:45] So, not only is he a teacher, but at this moment when he says these things to this woman, his disciples are with him. And so, he's trying to teach something in the presence of his students so that his students might learn something.

[25:01] He doesn't just want this woman to learn something, he wants his own students to learn something about this encounter as well. Because his disciples were Jewish and they would likely be very comfortable with Jesus calling this woman a dog.

[25:16] And so, not only this statement, not only is this a challenge to any pride in the woman if she thinks she could get any bread, but it's also a challenge to any prejudice in the disciples.

[25:31] A challenge if they think she should get any bread. bread. If Israel are the children, how well have the children been sharing the bread with other people throughout their history?

[25:43] They've not been sharing very well. They're supposed to be a nation of priests, and yet they've not been fulfilling their role as priests to the world. So one of the functions of this parable that Jesus is telling is that of order.

[26:00] The little children at the table should definitely be served bread before the little dog under the table. But it also functions as a contrast between what the children do with the bread that's being served and what the dog does.

[26:16] Anyone with a pet dog knows the excitement over a few scraps fallen from the table. And compared with the reception the Jews have been given Jesus or not given Jesus, this non-Jewish woman makes the dog in the parable look more grateful and loyal to the master than the ungrateful and faithless children.

[26:39] See that? The dog comes out better in the story than the children if we've been paying attention in Mark. The Jews have seen incredible miracles, countless healings, countless demons cast out, storms stilled, walking on water, the dead raised, and bread multiplied in the thousands, yet their faith is so little, so little.

[27:02] They've been given an absolute feast of revelation and still they lack faith. Yet with so little revelation, this woman so believes that Jesus has such power that even just the crumbs that fall off the table are enough to cast the demon out of her daughter.

[27:23] She's got such a high view of Jesus that she says even crumbs will do it. Even crumbs. Just a crumb of your power Jesus is enough. Just a little bit of yourself.

[27:36] I'm not asking for everything. I'm not asking for a lot. Just a crumb. Jesus, I'm not trying to take the bread off the children. I just want a crumb because I know that a crumb is enough. The disciples, the Pharisees, the Jews, they can't even see that the bread is enough.

[27:53] Even when he produces thousands, they can't even see that all this bread is enough. And this woman sees that even a crumb is enough. She responds to Jesus' parable with greater understanding than the Pharisees and apostles together.

[28:09] And it shows that she knows there's an order. She knows that she doesn't have a right to anything. She knows that Jesus doesn't owe her anything, but she knows that even a crumb of his mercy would be more than enough for the help that she needs.

[28:29] Just a crumb of the mercy of Jesus is more than enough. Jesus isn't trying to be rude to this woman. He's not trying to just go about and call people names.

[28:41] He's a wise teacher who isn't disappointed to be defeated in argument. He's inviting it, not just for her sake, but for the sake of his own disciples, who despite seeing a massive bread miracle, did not understand about the loaves because their hearts were hardened.

[28:59] Yet she understands about the bread that Jesus was serving, and she showed that she believed because she understood that even a crumb would be sufficient to chase away a demon. Just a crumb, and the demons scatter.

[29:13] Isn't that incredible, compared with the Jews, compared with the disciples even? And so he said to her, verse 29, well for this statement you may go your way, the demon has left your daughter.

[29:26] Verse 30, and she went home, and found the child lying in bed, and the demon gone. Such is the mercy of Jesus, that just a crumb can chase a demon away when the demon's not even in front of Jesus.

[29:45] And this woman, the faith that she had, not just to come to him in the first place, but to walk home in faith, that she will find her daughter well.

[29:57] Think about that walk home. How many of us would start to walk home and then start to doubt? Start to walk home and say, oh I need to go back, I need to bring him. But she walks home in faith and finds her little daughter lying in bed and the demon nowhere in sight.

[30:14] We've recently read in Mark the miracle that Jesus did with the bread. we saw the disciples didn't understand about the loaves because of their hard hearts. We then saw the prejudice from the Pharisees about who is clean and what is clean and what is unclean and how they can have clean hands, but a defiled heart.

[30:36] And yet this Gentile woman, who would have been considered unclean by the Jews, has more understanding and her heart is more open than the Pharisees and the disciples combined.

[30:47] This woman, who would be considered a dog to the Jews, was more ready to receive so little when the children rejected a feast. And because she knew that she had no right to it, and Jesus didn't owe her anything, she didn't presume on his grace, but she believed in his power and compassion more than can be said of his own people.

[31:14] She came in hunger and humility asking for only the smallest amount which would be more than can satisfy.

[31:27] We don't deserve to be at the table. None of us here deserve to be at this table, let alone the table with the king. We don't deserve to be at the table.

[31:37] God does not owe us even daily bread, never mind the living bread of his only son. God doesn't owe us daily provisions, never mind the bread of heaven.

[31:52] It's clear from this little girl having a demon that the problem is not limited to the Jews, nor is it just physical, but it's spiritual. It's not just Jewish, but it's universal.

[32:04] And so God's salvation is not just limited, but can be received by anyone who comes to him in hunger and humility. Jesus will save anyone who comes to him in faith for bread that we don't deserve.

[32:21] Now, just as I bring this to a close, let's notice the similarities between this and the story of Mephibosheth.

[32:35] When Mephibosheth came to the king, he fell on his face and paid homage. That's what this woman came to Jesus like. She came falling at his feet paying him homage.

[32:48] And then David said to Mephibosheth, you shall eat at my table always. And we have this encounter with Jesus and this woman about eating bread at the table.

[33:00] And in response to his kindness, Mephibosheth said, what is your servant that you should show regard for a dead dog such as I?

[33:12] Yeah, that woman understands the same thing that he understands. I don't deserve this, but what kindness from the king that I should be at his table and share bread in his presence.

[33:25] We do not belong at the table. We are woefully underdressed to dine with the king. We don't deserve this bread of heaven, broken for us, yet this bread is given to us in love and kindness.

[33:40] I have a little question and answer that I try to teach the boys at home at times. If they're asking for something, I will sometimes say, why should I give you that?

[33:53] And I'm trying to help them answer, not because of anything that they do, but their answer should be, because you love me. Because you love me. it is not by any merit of our own that we come to the table.

[34:06] We have no merit. It is not because Jesus owes us anything, but it is simply out of his mercy and grace, for God so loved the world that he gave his only son that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.

[34:21] Just as Jesus said in John 6, 51, I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.

[34:36] Let me pray. Lord, we thank you for your word. Your word is the living word.

[34:48] Your word is the word of God. Your word is spirit and life and truth. And we thank you that from your word we learn of your amazing grace, undeserved but yet given for sinners like us.

[35:07] And as we come to the table this morning, just a very, very small shadow of what is to come when we would see you and feast with you, as we come to this table and take bread, Lord, please, please prepare the posture of our hearts to know that we do not deserve this, that you owe us nothing, and that we are woefully underdressed, yet you are so kind to give us this bread, that your body would be broken and your blood shed for us, so that we could be at the table with you, sinners though we are.

[35:53] Lord, we give you thanks in your holy name. Amen.