A Mother's Faith
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Title: A Mother’s Faith
Mark’s emphasis is on the fact Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God.
That Jesus came into the world announcing the Kingdom of God, He healed the sick, He cast out demons, and He died for our sins, only to rise from the grave victorious on the third day.
Traditionally, Mark (or John Mark, as he is sometimes called) wrote this Gospel account from Rome, around the late 40’s to early 60’s. Basing much of it off the preaching and teaching of the apostle Peter.
And Mark writes His Gospel account in such a way so as to bring understanding not just to any Jewish person who may happen upon it, but for every Gentile reader as well. He will often explain certain Jewish customs or rituals so that the Gentile reader understands.
For Mark, it is imperative that the Gentiles be able to receive the truth of Christ as much as anyone. Though he acknowledges that Christ came to Israel, first, then to the Gentiles, Mark clarifies Christ did not come exclusively for the nation of Israel.
So this story we’re about to read is included in Mark’s account, as well as the Gospel of Matthew, and nowhere else in Scripture. So let’s read beginning in verse 24.
And from there he arose and went away to the region of Tyre and Sidon. And he entered a 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.
Now the woman was a Gentile, a Syrophoenician by birth. And she begged him to cast the demon out of her daughter.
And he said to her, “Let the children be fed first, for it is not right to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.”
But she answered him, “Yes, Lord; 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; the demon has left your daughter.”
And she went home and found the child lying in bed and the demon gone.
Some modern thinkers try to make this whole passage about race, even to the point they say Jesus is being racist towards this woman.
This story actually has very little to do with race, or current social agendas, and more to do with faith.
In fact, I’d suggest it has to do with faith that moves us closer to God.
Thesis: Before we ask God to move, we have to be willing to move towards God.
Intro: We so often want faith that moves mountains but what we really need is faith that touches the heart of God.
Faith that God gets excited about! Matthew’s account has Jesus’ answer slightly different:
Then Jesus answered her, “O woman, great is your faith! Be it done for you as you desire.” And her daughter was healed instantly.
This woman found herself at the mercy of God, and she falls at His feet, in faith begging Him to do something that will change her circumstances.
Today, many people feel this way. No, your circumstances may not be the same as this woman, but your pain and your hurt is just as great and just as real to you.
And you’re at the mercy of God, because He’s the only one who can change the situation, and you’ve gone to Him in prayer, time and time again, and nothing budges, nothing changes.
Faith in God may not change your circumstances, God is not your genie. He is a sovereign King. We can’t just declare and claim our way out of problems, that’s not what God’s word tells us.
Faith in God may not change your circumstances, because it doesn’t change God. It’s not meant to. It’s meant to change you.
A prayer offered in faith to God will change us, it will change our will to His will, it will mold us, bend us. Notice in this text Jesus never once tells this woman “No.”
Jesus carefully chooses His words and redirects her, until finally the woman’s full faith, her full heart are on display and that’s when Jesus says, “Great is your faith!”
But how does she get there? How does she get to this point?
There are 3 things I want us to see in this Syrophoenician woman’s faith today, that she had determined humility, urgent persistence, and a desperate focus.
She had Determined Humility
She had Determined Humility
And from there he arose and went away to the region of Tyre and Sidon. And he entered a house and did not want anyone to know, yet he could not be hidden.
Jesus wants to finally get away with His disciples - He has been trying to do this since Chapter 6, when they went away and He ended up feeding the 5,000. (Mark 6:30)
They still haven’t had that “retreat”, that get away to unpack from the disciples’ little, short-term missions trip.
So Jesus decides to go to the region of Tyre and Sidon - now most translations say Tyre, but verse 31 will make it clear they’re in the same region of Sidon, so it’s included here in the ESV translation.
To go to the vicinity of Tyre was to go to a Gentile region.
In the time of Isaiah, it was a city built on trade, and the prophet had said their time of destruction was going to come - we see this take place in Isaiah 23.
There were still some hard feelings towards this region by the Jewish people. Josephus - the Jewish Historian - describes the Tyrians as “notoriously our bitterest enemies.”
They’d had a good relationship, historically, with Herod the Great, but that’s certainly not a good commentary on them. Their economic relationship with those of the Galilean region only benefited those of Tyre...
The people of Galilee would have resented Tyre and Sidon, so for Jesus to go there may have been offensive to his own people, which tells us this is a deliberate trip - he truly wants to get away.
But just like previous attempts, Jesus is not going to be left alone for long. And this also tells us He has become even more famous far beyond the Jewish regions.
Now stop for just a second, because we’ve covered his popularity quite a bit to this point, but think for a moment as to what this means for Jesus.
Those of you with kids, when the constantly bombard you with things they need, questions, the “Mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom,” and you want to just scream, “GO ASK YOUR DAD” you kind of get a hint as to how Jesus feels at this point.
He has difficulty getting away from people. There are times He tries, but His heart breaks for the people because he sees them and (Mark 6:34) .... he had compassion on them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd.
In our text today, though, Jesus purposefully goes away from the people of Israel, He wants to be alone with His disciples, to talk to them, likely to prepare them for his crucifixion and their future ministries.
So he enters someone else’s house, perhaps a friend of a friend, a relative of a distant disciple, we’re not told, and Jesus and the 12 go in hoping to just have a day or two of peace.
To be clear, Jesus does not want to be found, yet as we’ll see, this woman finds Jesus. That takes determination.
When Jesus does not want to be found, He’s proven to be hard to find. Remember chapter 1?
And Simon and those who were with him searched for him, and they found him and said to him, “Everyone is looking for you.”
They looked everywhere for Him until they find Him.
In the same way we’ll see this mother do the same thing. Verse 25...
But immediately a woman whose little daughter had an unclean spirit heard of him and came and fell down at his feet.
“But immediately” - immediately is one of Mark’s favorite words. We’ve seen him use it often. Mark’s Gospel is a fast paced account.
It’s the Greek word “euthys”, and it means “at once”, or “straight away”.
In other words, as soon as Jesus got to town, she heard about it and ran to find Him.
Again, in Matthew’s account she comes crying, and asking Jesus to do something, but it appears Jesus almost ignores her.
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.”
“Jesus, send that woman away, her crying is getting awkward. It’s embarrassing us. Look, she’s kind of getting on our nerves.”
Yet Jesus says nothing.
Mark’s account tells us she threw herself down at Jesus’ feet. This is a sign of humility.
She shows her determination in finding Him, but she displays her humility in her posture. She falls at His feet.
Why? Because her daughter had an unclean spirit. A demon.
We’re not told what the demon did to her daughter, what abuses she had suffered, if it had just caused an illness or seizures, or worse, but it drives this mother to seek help.
She’d likely tried doctors, she’d tried priests in the temples of the idols they served in her region, but then word reaches her of a Jewish Rabbi, a carpenter, who isn’t afraid to touch lepers, who speaks to the unclean spirits and they flee from His presence.
And she says, “My deliverer has come.”
She doesn’t go to Jesus and demand, she doesn’t go to Jesus and declare, or name it and claim it, she goes to Jesus and she simply falls at his feet in humility.
And in her determination, she will not get up until Jesus hears her pleas, until He promises to do something.
In the same way, we have to ask, are we determined to fall at the feet of the Savior and pray until He changes the situation or changes us?
Remember that popular song from a few years ago,
“Lord move in a way that I've never seen before
'Cause there's a mountain in the way and a lock on the door
I'm drifting away, waves are crashing on the shore
So Lord move, or move me”
This woman understands this.
In her humility, she determines to move toward God. To get on her knees before Christ and cry out, “Lord move.”
In fact, in Matthew’s account, he writes: Matthew 15:25 “But she came and knelt before him, saying, “Lord, help me.””
Lord, help me. I do not know of a more powerful prayer.
Remember, when Peter was drowning, when he had walked on the water with Jesus and just for a moment lost his focus, he cried out, “Lord, save me!” (Matthew 14:30)
Some of the most powerful prayers are so humble, yet determined.
“Lord, help me.”
“Lord, save me.”
“Lord, you know.”
In those powerful little prayers God sees your brokenness and begins to heal, begins to move, begins to reshape you in the image of His Son, and begins to do powerful things in you, through you, and in the world around you.
It’s why James tells us, James 5:14-16 “Is anyone among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer of faith will save the one who is sick, and the Lord will raise him up. And if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven. Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working.”
Prayer that is determined, prayer that is humble, that’s a prayer that moves us closer to the heart of God.
And I’ll say it again: Before we ask God to move, we have to be willing to move towards Him.
She had Urgent Persistence
She had Urgent Persistence
Now the woman was a Gentile, a Syrophoenician by birth. And she begged him to cast the demon out of her daughter.
She comes to Jesus and begs Him. It’s the Greek word erohta (ηρωτα) and it means she appeals to Him, she begs Him, she prays to Him.
There’s an urgency about her demand.
“Lord, I’ve gone to everyone else, you’re the only one that can help me. Time is running out, I’m afraid what this spirit may do to my daughter, please, please, please...” and her voice trails off into sobs, weeping at his feet.
The Syrophoenician Gentiles were a people who had abandoned the God of Israel and worshipped idols.
When it came to the women of this region, especially, Israel had received a mixed bag, so to speak.
For example, it was a Phoenician woman from Sidon who had petitioned Elijah on behalf of her son who had died, and so, the prophet cried to the Lord, and the Lord raised the boy from the dead. (1 Kings 17:17-24).
On the other hand, the wicked queen Jezebel was also a Phoenician woman. She was the daughter of Ethbaal, king of the Sidonians - and she caused her husband, and ultimately all Israel to worship Baal. (1 Kings 16:29-33)
1 Kings 16:33 “...Ahab did more to provoke the Lord, the God of Israel, to anger than all the kings of Israel who were before him.” And his wife is who led him into these sins.
But this woman who comes to Jesus is “Syrophoenician”, which distinguishes the time and region she’s from. Greek culture had influenced Syria, and after Alexander the Great’s conquests, many Greeks had settled in the region of Tyre and Sidon.
So the woman is, by Mark’s account, both Greek and Syrophoenician.
Greeks and Phoenicians were idolators. So when I say this woman had sought out other remedies for her daughter, she likely didn’t just go to doctors and priests, she probably had tried magicians, oracles, and witches.
In fact, Jesus’ reply to her will say as much:
And he said to her, “Let the children be fed first, for it is not right to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.”
To begin with, some speculate Jesus was just repeating a popular proverb, something the woman would have been familiar with.
But Jesus is also clarifying that he will not heal like the pagans she’s gone to already. He was sent to Israel first, those who worship the true God. In fact, Matthew’s account makes this statement clear when he quotes Jesus
Matthew 15:24 “He answered, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”
Jesus wants her to demonstrate her faith in the one, true God.
The word Jesus uses for dogs = Greek kunerion (tense is kunerios - κυναριοις) which in this tense means “little dogs” or “puppies”, and was often meant to mean domesticated, friendly dogs - it’s not a racist term.
We do see a different word used, that is a little more insulting use of “dog” in Matthew 7:6
“Do not give dogs what is holy, and do not throw your pearls before pigs, lest they trample them underfoot and turn to attack you.
It’s the same word Paul uses in Philippians 3:2
Look out for the dogs, look out for the evildoers, look out for those who mutilate the flesh.
And there he is referring to Jewish people as well as Gentiles - so it’s not meant as a racist word.
It’s the word is “kuyohn” (κυσιν) which means a vicious dog, a wild, untamed, dog. Jesus and Paul are both using the word in Matthew 7 and Philippians 3, to describe people who are combative, who are hostile toward the Gospel, and who would respond with mockery and wickedness.
If Jesus wanted the most insulting word, He would have used kuyohn, not kunerion. He’s not speaking to her to insult her, he’s actually speaking tenderly to her.
He’s not rejecting her because she’s a woman, He isn’t rejecting her because of her ethnicity. He’s rejecting her because of her faith.
But the woman doesn’t move. She doesn’t flinch. She hears Jesus’s words and they don’t sting her, she’s part Greek, she knows the custom of owning dogs as pets.
So she stays. She persists. She doesn’t give up.
See, a lot of people come to Jesus and they make their list of demands. “Jesus, YOU gotta fix my marriage, Jesus, YOU gotta heal my body. Jesus YOU gotta give me more money to pay all my bills.”
And when Jesus doesn’t, well, they’ll move on and try something else.
Truth be told, that’s likely what this woman had done prior to coming to Jesus. The doctors couldn’t fix her daughter, it was something spiritual, not physical, so she went to the pagan priests.
They didn’t have any special powers, they couldn’t remove the spirit so she likely went to the magicians, the witches, the oracles because they’d had reputations for dealing with spirits.
But they couldn’t do anything but appeal to bigger demons, bigger spirits.
This unnamed mother was running out of options and she hears that Rabbi from Galilee was in town and this is her chance. This is the last, last straw. If He can’t heal her daughter, nobody can.
And something inside this mother breaks. She hurries to find Him, and as she runs she likely tells herself, “I won’t budge until I get an answer. I’m not moving until I have been at least given some hope.”
With urgent persistence she throws herself at the feet of the only hope she has left and begs as she weeps.
Have you ever been so desperate?
Have you ever said God you have to do something or I’ve got nowhere else to go?
When you pray the words of the Psalmist, Psalm 13:3 “Consider and answer me, O Lord my God; light up my eyes, lest I sleep the sleep of death,”
Psalm 5:1-2 “Give ear to my words, O Lord; consider my groaning. Give attention to the sound of my cry, my King and my God, for to you do I pray.”
Psalm 119:153 “Look on my affliction and deliver me, for I do not forget your law.”
The prophets prayed this way and nations shook. The apostles prayed this way and prisons crumbled around them.
So the question remains, are we willing to pray this way?
Because Before we ask God to move, we have to be willing to move towards God.
She had Desperate Focus
She had Desperate Focus
But she answered him, “Yes, Lord; yet even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.”
Again, this is another clue that Jesus is using a word for a type of dog one would want in their house, not a wild dog, not a derogatory slang.
Her response shines a light on her faith.
In all of Scripture, only a few people are ever really commended for their faith, most who are commended remain nameless, such as this woman.
In Hebrews 11, for example, the Faith Hall of Fame chapter of the Bible, Abel is mentioned, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Rahab, Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, David, Samuel and the prophets - that’s a relatively short list.
Shadrach, Meschach, Abednego aren’t mentioned, Solomon isn’t mentioned. Nehemiah, Ezra, Ruth… their names are all left out, as are many more.
Yet this woman is commended for her faith and this is what does it, as we’ll soon see.
Initially when the woman had come, Jesus had been silent. But He begins His response here in Mark with “Let the children be fed first.”
Israel must be healed, Israel must first hear the Gospel, Israel must first be given a chance. That’s the initial meaning here - there’s a slight eschatological, or prophetic meaning to this statement that the reader may pick up and the woman may miss.
Jesus did first come to Israel first - Matthew’s account makes that clear with Jesus saying as much.
In the book of Acts, Jesus tells the disciples Acts 1:8 “...you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.”
So this encounter doesn’t change Jesus’ mind on that, on the order the Gospel will go forth into the world.
But her response does shine a light upon the depth of her faith in Christ.
In a sense, Jesus says “the little dogs get the crumbs” and she looks into the eyes of her Savior and says, “Yes, I am a little dog, so let me get some of those crumbs.”
Martin Luther said “She catches Christ with His own words.”
The beauty of that is knowing the truth of Christ, we understand HE WANTED HER TO TRAP HIM! He wanted her to move her heart closer to His!
This is something that Jesus commends when He said, Matthew 11:12 “From the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven has suffered violence, and the violent take it by force.”
The kingdom of heaven is for those like this woman, who are willing to spend every moment in pursuit of it. They are desperate for it, yet their focus is always on it.
They run their race with endurance, fixing their eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith (Hebrews 12:1-2 paraphrase)
Do we desperately pray for anything the way this woman pled for her daughter?
And he said to her, “For this statement you may go your way; the demon has left your daughter.”
Charles Spurgeon, when preaching on this passage said, “The Lord Jesus was charmed with the fair jewel of this woman’s faith, and watching it and delighting in it he resolved to turn it round and set it in other lights, that the various facets of this priceless diamond might each one flash its brilliance and delight his soul.”
Initially when the woman had come, Jesus had been silent, but now I believe He could not contain His excitement.
Matthew recounts Him as saying, Matthew 15:28 “O woman, great is your faith! Be it done for you as you desire.” And her daughter was healed instantly.”
Jesus’ answer to her pleas is so full of grade, grace that is clearly not just for those from the House of Israel, but for all people. Everyone can benefit from God’s love.
The message Jesus sends is simply that priority does not necessarily mean exclusivity. His love, His grace, His redemption are not available only to those who are Jewish but for the whole world to experience.
In the same way, the cross of Christ is for all who will repent and believe upon its purpose. He came to Israel first, but through His cross, His death, all might be delivered.
So He sends her on her way.
And she went home and found the child lying in bed and the demon gone.
Determined, but humble.
Urgent, but persistent.
Desperate, but focused.
Her faith got Christ’s attention. Her faith moved her from a home with a demon, to the feet of the Messiah. It brought healing to her daughter, and wholeness to her own heart.
She moves closer to God, and God moves, and heals her daughter.
Before we ask God to move, we have to be willing to move towards God.
Conclusion:
I’m going to move to close and I’m going to dismiss us in a word of prayer in a moment, but if you’re here and you are hurting, if you’re facing desperate circumstances, if you’re in urgent need, well, I know I already mentioned it but James tells us to pray.
So if you’re in need of prayer, I’d just challenge you to find a place away from everyone else in the sanctuary this morning, either at the front, in your seat, or somewhere off to the side and spend some time in intimate, humble, desperate prayer.
Pray focused, pray desperate.
Pray persistently, pray urgently.
Pray in humility but with a determined heart.
Move closer to Jesus, and watch Jesus move - and even if He doesn’t move in the way you want, it doesn’t mean He’s done moving you.
Let’s close in prayer.
PRAY