Today’s Podcast
Today’s Bible reading plan:
Read it in a year – Mark 9-10
see the whole year’s plan [here](http://www.bible-reading.com/bible-plan.pdf)
Today’s Devotional
Matthew 15:24,26,28
Jesus: I was sent here only to gather up the lost sheep of Israel.
The woman came up to Jesus and knelt before Him.
Canaanite Woman: Lord, help me!
Jesus: It is not right to waste the children’s bread by feeding dogs.
Canaanite Woman: But, Lord, even dogs eat the crumbs that fall by the table as their master is eating.
Jesus—whose ancestors included Ruth and Rahab—spoke with kindness and insight.
Jesus: Woman, you have great faith. And your request is done.
What do Jesus’ words mean for us today?
Jesus’ words at first seem pretty harsh, don’t they? Here’s a women in desperate need for her daughter. The girl is possessed by a demon and she can do nothing to help her. She comes to the Master hoping that He can do something to relieve her of the plight she suffers. And what does Jesus do? He snubs her. “I was sent here only to gather up the lost sheep of Israel.”
And it gets worse!
The woman cries and pleads, falls on her face at His feet and cries out, “Lord, help me!” What was the reply of the only One who could help her? “It is not right to waste the children’s bread by feeding dogs.”
Did Jesus just call her a dog? Did He insult her in the most vile way and cast her aside as so much garbage?
I don’t think so. I think we have to look at the rest of the story as Paul Harvey used to say. Sometimes we get so use to God answering our prayers that we forget who does those miraculous things for us. We forget that it really is God answering and we just walk away after He has done some incredible thing for us without even thanking Him. Sometimes we are really ungrateful, snobbish little brats. And I think Jesus in some ways wanted those around Him to understand we sometimes need to get desperate in our asking.
When you really think about it, none of us deserve to have God answer our requests. What have we really done to deserve His grace, mercy, and kindness? What have we done that merits His expenditure of power on our behalf? Nothing. We were His enemies. Lost. Rebellious. Disobedient. Sinful. Still He pours out His favor on us. Pretty remarkable, isn’t it?
So one thing Jesus wants to show us in this story is to be grateful for what we get from God, because we really don’t deserve anything.
Another point that comes out clearly in this story is that sometimes we need to be persistent in our desperate petitioning. Jesus will give us more examples of being persistent in our prayers and petitions later. I think it’s a hard lesson for us to learn, but one that is so important for us in the United States where we live under a philosophy of instant gratification. I want what I want…and I want it NOW! I even get frustrated with the little hour glass on my computer when it takes more than five seconds for a website to load. Can you imagine? What have we come to? Where is our patience, our persistence? We sometimes need to be like this woman who came back to Jesus and said, but Lord, even the dogs get crumbs from the table.
And that’s the next point. God gives even us dogs His grace and mercy. We don’t deserve it, but He gives it to us. In fact, He pours out His love lavishly on us. He loves us so much that He gave His only Son to die for us. We can not begin to imagine the love the Father has for us. Compared to God, we are so far below the level of a dog or a rat or a worm, how could He be mindful of us, David asks in the Psalms. Yet, God gave us His very best. And Paul tells us, if God gave us His Son, would He withhold anything else from us? We gives us everything. He makes us heirs as He adopts us into His family. Just stop and think about that. We are not worthy to receive the crumbs from His table, yet He adopts us and sits us in chairs at the banquet feast.
But it takes something on our part. It takes faith. The woman in our story had enough faith to come back to Jesus and plead for her daughter. She had enough faith to believe He could do something for her that no one else could do. She had enough faith that she was not going to go away until Jesus did something for her. She knew He might tell her no, but she had to try. She had to exercise her faith in Him. She had to plead for her daughter. And she was willing to break all the social norms to do so. She was a Canaanite. Even worse than a Samaritan. She lived among the worst of the pagans. And she was a woman. How in the world could she dare to approach Jesus with such boldness? But she did because He was her hope.
Do you have the gratitude, the persistence, the faith to approach Jesus? This lady did. And it really paid off.
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