Dogged Faith

It’s Super Bowl Sunday! Whether you have a team you are rooting for, watching the commercials or to see how many camera shots go to Taylor Swift’s reactions to Travis Kelsey’s catches, you can almost bet that two evenly matched teams are going hear a locker room speech at some point that says, “It all comes down to who wants it more!” If you’ve ever been involved in sports, or if you follow sports at all, you will know that a regular question asked when a sports team is ready to head into competition is: how bad do you want it?

Slide How bad do you want it?

My story about staying the course!– I was graduating from Baylor and I needed a job. The story of interviewing with Proctor and Gamble. How bad do you want it?

It’s a question about desire. It’s a question about drive. It’s not first and foremost a question about skill, preparation, or strategy. Rather it’s a question about passion, need, desire … belief! Do you believe?

In our series Living Life by God’s Hand, we are learning to trust God’s word and His way as we press into living a life by faith in God. We have been studying Matthew 14-16 as Jesus is demonstrating in word and deed living life by God’s hand. We have been challenged to trust God, putting our faith in action during times of loss and grief (death of John the Baptist), when we have little and are need (feeding 5,000 and 4,000), when the risk is great and our faith is little (Peter walking on water), or when the challenge is to pay attention to the inside, the heart rather than just managing our image or reputation (Jesus rebuking the Pharisees).

Last week we even saw how man-made rules and tradition can cause us to focus on the rule rather than the relationship, to take our eyes off of God just like Peter took his eyes off the Lord and to lost sight of the principles and promises of God that He was to believe in.

If I asked you, “Do you believe that God is God, Jesus is Lord, you are His child, and that He has a plan and a purpose for your life?” You would say, yes!

Then life happens, problems persist, God is silent, answers are in short supply, you have exhausted all your options. You have done everything you need to do … where do you turn?

If you were to ask most Christians what is the toughest part of being a Christian? They would most likely say things like resisting temptation, forgiving and loving my enemies, or enduring pain and suffering.

Staying strong, faithful and faith filled, even when the circumstances of your life are challenging your faith.

Our passage this morning, Matthew 15:21-31 challenges us to understand the ministry of Jesus in light of his mission, his timing, his priorities, and our faith. We believe, pursue, persevere, press into our relationship with God with what some might call a dogged faith!

Slide Is the Good News really good news for everyone?

Are there some people who are beyond the reach of God’s love and provision for salvation? Jew, gentile, clean, unclean, religious, pagan, regardless of political persuasion, whether you are a reviled tax collector or a dead on the inside Pharisee. – the short answer is no!

But that was not what the Jewish people felt. They felt the Messiah was for them. They had lost sight of the promise to Abraham from God. In Genesis 12:3 God says to Abraham …

Slide I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” Genesis 12:3

In Genesis 22:16-18 after Abraham obeys God. He is ready sacrifice Isaac when God stops him and provides a different sacrifice …

… because you have done this and have not withheld your son, your only son, I will surely bless you, … in your offspring shall all the nations of the earth be blessed, because you have obeyed my voice.” Genesis 22:16–18

As we look at our text this morning open to Matthew 15:21 …

Obedience brings blessing and Jesus was no difference. He knew that he was here for a purpose and it was popularity. Jesus was on a mission …

Slide Jesus is led by His mission not by the crowd.

Jesus leaves the crowds, the Pharisees, the Jewish people and heads into gentile territory …

Slide And Jesus went away from there and withdrew to the district of Tyre (tire) and Sidon. Matthew 15:21

Tyre and Sidon were two Gentile port cities along the Mediterranean. Tyrians bore the greatest animosity toward the Jews.

Jezebel, a princess of Tyre married Ahab. Her name has become a synonym for an evil and wicked woman.

This was an expectation of the Messiah. When he comes, he is going to go into places like Tyre—the very embodiment of paganism—and destroy them. You expect a Messiah to go to such a wicked place, call them all dogs, and leave—maybe lighting a match on his way out.

But the Gospel of Matthew is painting a different picture of the Messiah. He’s just spoke to the Pharisees about what defiles a person. It’s not what is on the outside but it’s the stuff of the inside. That kind of talk would lead Jesus into Tyre to provide redemption instead of wrathful rebuke.

Jesus’s mission is described in Luke 19:10 …

Slide For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost. Luke 19:10

So what is your mission, what is it that God has called you to do that you will pursue at great cost?

Slide Like Jesus, we are called to live on mission!

In pursuit of the mission, we experience all sorts of challenges to our faith that can distract us from the mission of becoming whole people, who take the whole gospel to the whole world.

In the face of all those distractions, worries, concerns, anxieties … Jesus reminded us in Matthew 6:33

Slide But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. Therefore, do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble. Matthew 6:33–34

We are called to go into places that might be uncomfortable, to have conversations with people who are far from God, even when it is in the face of hostility. Why? Because we believe that Jesus …

Slide Jesus is the answer to all the problems you face!

So Jesus is on mission, going into hostile territory and encounters a woman.

Slide And behold, a Canaanite woman from that region came out and was crying, “Have mercy on me, O Lord, Son of David; my daughter is severely oppressed by a demon.” Matthew 15:22

Right out of the gate, Matthew sets the stage for an enemy of the Jewish Messiah to be confronted …

Who is this woman? A Canaanite - implies that she is unclean and pagan and evokes an adversarial relationship, dating from the divinely-sanctioned conquest of the Canaanites' land by the Israelites as described all the way back in Numbers 33.

Slide … When you pass over the Jordan into the land of Canaan, then you shall drive out all the inhabitants of the land from before you and destroy all their figured stones and destroy all their metal images and demolish all their high places. And you shall take possession of the land and settle in it, for I have given the land to you to possess it. Numbers 33:51–53

In Mark’s gospel we see she is …

Slide Now the woman was a Gentile, a Syrophoenician by birth. Mark 7:24–30

She is Canaanite, not Jewish and this is the issue. She is a Gentile. Because this Gentile women, living in a Gentile land, recognized that the God of the Jews was the one true God, and that she was unworthy of any goodness or grace from the one true God.

The gods of Africa, Asia, India and Europe are all false gods. The one true God is the God of Israel.

Notice here that this is a Gentile woman, in a Gentile land, and she refers to Jesus as the Son of David.

Seventeen verses in the New Testament describe Jesus as the “son of David.” But the question arises, how could Jesus be the son of David if David lived approximately 1,000 years before Jesus? The answer is that Christ (the Messiah) was the fulfillment of the prophecy of the seed of David. The prophet Nathan spoke this vision from God concerning David …

When your days are fulfilled and you lie down with your fathers, I will raise up your offspring after you, who shall come from your body, and I will establish his kingdom. He shall build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. … And your house and your kingdom shall be made sure forever before me. Your throne shall be established forever. 2 Samuel 7:12–13, 16

That throne, that kingdom … is the kingdom that Jesus was ushering in and she called him this messianic title, Son of David. This means that as a Gentile she possibly had knowledge of the Jewish scriptures or recognized Jesus as the Jewish Messiah. This is an important point. As a pagan, Canaanite, gentile woman she had her own gods but they couldn’t help her.

You may be able to identify with this desperate woman. May you have been or are right now at the end of your rope, no where else to turn. You have exhausted all the modern gods the world has to answer and you know like me that Jesus is your only hope. He is the answer! If we are going to live life by the hand of God in faith …

Slide Living a life by the hand of God requires we cry out to Jesus as the source of salvation and hope!

This gentile (like us) woman cried to Jesus and what she got was silence.

Slide But he did not answer her a word. And his disciples came and begged him, saying, “Send her away, for she is crying out after us.” Matthew 15:23

The truth is …

Slide God is sometimes silent!

You wonder if he heard you, if he is there, if he is going to answer your prayers? I have experienced the silence of God in my own life. How about you? Have you ever found God silent? You are not alone.

The Psalmist cry out to God when they encounter His silence.

Sometimes we experience God’s silence because we are not silent. The Psalmist wrote …

Slide For God alone my soul waits in silence; from him comes my salvation. Psalm 62:1

Then there are times when silence is God is part of our desperation .

Slide To you, O LORD, I call; my rock, be not deaf to me, lest, if you be silent to me, I become like those who go down to the pit. Psalm 28:1

Slide Be not silent, O God of my praise! Psalm 109:1

The disciples respond to Jesus’s silence and the woman’s shouting!

Send her away – answer her, give her what she wants and get rid of her. She is really a pain. Then when Jesus speaks, he doesn’t speak to her, he speaks to his disciples who are telling him to get rid of her.

Slide He answered, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” Matthew 15:24

Slide Jesus is saying that his mission has a priority, Jews first and then Gentiles!

If the Jewish people accepted Jesus then took the message of God’s salvation to all the world, then the promise of God to Abraham would be fulfilled just as God promised. But those he came did receive him.

Slide He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him. But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, John 1:11–12

Paul, the converted Pharisee now Christ follower and missionary to the Gentile reminds us of the same thing …

Slide For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. Romans 1:16

You might think, that’s not fair. Jesus, ignoring this woman and then basically saying she’s not his problem. That He has more important things to do than to listen to this pagan, unclean gentile Canaanite! This is a side of Jesus we have never seen … oh and it gets worse!

Slide But she came and knelt before him, saying, “Lord, help me.” And he answered, “It is not right to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.” Matthew 15:25-26

Did Jesus just call this woman a dog? Yes! That would not fly today in our culture. Remember the old nursery rhyme, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.” Has been replaced with cry rooms at colleges and mantras that “words are violence” and symposiums that for most part seek to shut down any critic of behavior or belief. Is this verse …

· The children are Israel.

· The dogs are the Gentiles.

It is no secret that the Jews of Christ’s day often referred to the Gentiles as dogs. If you want a Biblical example, in Psalm 22:16 the Romans soldiers who put Christ on the cross are referred to as “dogs.” For dogs encompass me; a company of evildoers encircles me; they have pierced my hands and feet … Psalm 22:16

· Kuon – wild dogs. Jesus doesn’t use this for a wild dog. Jews didn’t have pet dogs. Gentiles did have pet dogs.

· Kynarian – domesticated, puppy

The Theological Dictionary of the New Testament (κύων)

Although there are Jews who speak of the faithfulness of the dog, in the main it is regarded as “the most despicable, insolent and miserable of creatures” (Str.-B., I, 722). Comparison with a dog is insulting and dishonouring

But a dog is a dog and you and I are dogs! He is saying we are dogs!

Slide Are you insulted that Jesus would call you a dog?

Not if it is true. Paul reminds in Eph …

Slide remember that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. Ephesians 2:12–13

The prophet Isaiah wrote …

Slide We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment. Isaiah 64:6a

This is who we are without Jesus!

Slide She said, “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.” Matthew 15:27

Slide She comes to God with needs not rights.

The woman’s humility – she shows up and she falls at his feet. God opposes the proud and embraces the humble.

Slide “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.” James 4:6

This is the place where many struggle, where the message of good news becomes a stumbling block, our pride gets in the way and we think, who is the person to call me a sinner, a filthy rag, a dog!

Slide For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men. 1 Corinthians 1:22–25

‌ Slide Come to God because you recognize your need not because you have a sense of entitlement!

She gets it. But the key word isn’t “dogs” it’s bread.

Slide The key word is not dog … it is the word bread!

She is a dog in need of the bread that only the Lord God, Son of David, Messiah, and Savior Jesus can bring. He is the bread of life!

The Canaanite woman, quite rightly, sees the whole picture in this entire way of thinking. Why should we assume that the kids starve if the puppy gets some crumbs? She’s just asking for a crumb. Just a touch of his garment. Surely, there is enough Messiah to go around.

Her dogged faith leads to a …

Slide Dogged Faith leads to a conversion moment.

Slide Then Jesus answered her, “O woman, great is your faith! Be it done for you as you desire.” And her daughter was healed instantly. Matthew 15:28

Interestingly, the only thing Jesus did in the region was heal this women’s daughter, then he left. In other words, the sole purpose of leaving Jewish land and coming to this Gentile region was to heal this women’s daughter. This is not only true in Matthew’s account, but Mark’s also. The story does not appear in the other gospels. So, he obviously cared enough about this woman to go well out of his way to meet her.

But more than anything Jesus is teaching his disciples about what it really means that he is the Bread of Life. It means that He’s enough.

When you and I are living with a dogged faith, a faith that won’t stop pressing in, pushing through, persevering with and pursuing the one who is our bread of life, our only hope then one thing will happen …

Slide God will be glorified as lives are changed!

Slide Jesus went on from there and walked beside the Sea of Galilee. And he went up on the mountain and sat down there. And great crowds came to him, bringing with them the lame, the blind, the crippled, the mute, and many others, and they put them at his feet, and he healed them, so that the crowd wondered, when they saw the mute speaking, the crippled healthy, the lame walking, and the blind seeing. And they glorified the God of Israel. Matthew 15:29-31

So, what do you need to do this morning?

Three groups of people listening to this message this morning. Both are being invited to Live into a dogged faith, living life by God’s hand.

First group – I cannot follow a Jesus who would say that I am a dog!

· Humble yourself before the God of the universe. Recognize your pride that is getting in the way of you receiving forgiveness, healing and salvation.

Second group – I know I am a sinner, and I am desperate for God’s forgiveness, mercy, and grace. I want to know God and yes, I understand I far from Him and He is my only hope. Save this dog!

· Like the Canaanite woman, cry out to Jesus, son of David, Lord you know my need. Forgive my sin, I place my faith in you. Don’t be silent, hear me, speak to me oh Lord.

Third group – I once was lost but now I’m found, was blind but now I see. I know where I was and that once I was an object of God’s wrath. But now, I am a child of God, forgiven and called to join Him on mission in the Kingdom of God. I am not eating crumbs from the table, I am sitting at the table feasting on the bread of life.

· Lord forgive me where my faith has been less than a dogged faith of passionately pursuing you and your purposes for my life. I want to live my life trusting you and leaning into a dogged faith! All for your glory!

Can you imagine the difference in your life, our church, city, would if we, like this Canaanite woman wanted, needed God more than anything in life. How bad do you want it? Let’s pray!