1. "There are some days that seem as familiar as can be. Everything seems normal, nothing out of the ordinary. Whether causing a warm comfort or a kind of blasé boredom, the day felt like every other day. Such days are straightforward, predictable, dependable, unremarkable. They make up the great majority of most all of our lives."

2. "Such creation of new matter is an exclusive prerogative of God."

3. "Physical healing was always a means of addressing the even worse condition of idolatry and replacing that with the worship of the only true God who is the only one deserving of all our praise."

4. "If the followers of Jesus have not seemed very compassionate to you, let me just apologize. We're not representing Jesus very well at that point, because something that Jesus is, is unbelievably compassionate."

5. "There is not enough need in us to empty Christ of all His compassion."

6. "You know how you can make something more powerful by leaving a space of silence after it? The words just seem to hang in the air and gain weight as they hang there."

7. "Desperation is the origin of so many of our best prayers."

8. "This prayer is so plain, and it is so stripped down, that it is useful for us at all times and all places. Whoever we are, what we always need from the Lord is His help. Whatever situation we're in, who else can always help us but the Lord?"

9. "God uses unlikely vessels because He gets particular glory to Himself that way."

10. "It almost seemed as if the Gentile tombs were beginning to crack open before the tombs of Israel."

Observation Questions

1. According to Matthew 15:22, how does the Canaanite woman address Jesus, and what is her specific request concerning her daughter?

2. In Matthew 15:23-24, how does Jesus initially respond to the woman's cries, and what reason does He give for His mission focus when He does speak?

3. What does the Canaanite woman say in Matthew 15:27 in response to Jesus' statement about the children's bread and the dogs?

4. In Matthew 15:30-31, what types of afflicted people were brought to Jesus, and how did the crowd respond after witnessing the healings?

5. According to Matthew 15:32, what specific concern does Jesus express about the crowd, and how long had they been with Him?

6. In Matthew 15:34-38, what resources did the disciples have available, and what was the result after Jesus gave thanks and distributed the food?

Interpretation Questions

1. Why is it significant that Matthew identifies this woman as a "Canaanite" (the only use of this term in the New Testament), and what does her use of the title "Son of David" reveal about her understanding of Jesus?

2. How should we understand Jesus' silence and His statement about being sent "only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel" in light of His character as compassionate throughout the Gospels? What purpose might this exchange have served?

3. What does the Canaanite woman's response about dogs eating crumbs from the master's table demonstrate about her faith, and why does Jesus commend it as "great"?

4. The sermon emphasizes that the healed crowds "glorified the God of Israel" (v. 31). Why is this response significant, and how does it connect to the deeper purpose of Jesus' healing ministry?

5. How do the details of this passage—the Gentile location, the feeding of 4,000 with seven baskets left over, and the praise to "the God of Israel"—point to the expansion of God's saving work beyond ethnic Israel?

Application Questions

1. The Canaanite woman persisted in bringing her need to Jesus despite apparent silence and obstacles. What current situation in your life requires this kind of persistent, desperate prayer, and what might it look like to pray "Lord, help me" with her same confidence?

2. The sermon noted that bringing afflicted people to Jesus—leading the blind, carrying the lame—was a loving act requiring patience and effort. Who in your life needs you to help bring them to Jesus, whether through practical care, prayer, or sharing the gospel, and what specific step can you take this week?

3. Jesus expressed compassion for the hungry crowd when His disciples seemed more focused on the inconvenience. In what relationships or situations have you prioritized your own comfort over others' genuine needs, and how might you respond differently?

4. The religious leaders of Israel failed to recognize Jesus while this foreign woman identified Him correctly. How might familiarity with religious activity or biblical knowledge sometimes blind us to truly seeing and trusting Jesus, and what can guard against this?

5. The sermon described these healings as opportunities for people to recognize their Creator and get right with Him. If you have experienced God's mercy or provision in your life, how are you using that renewed opportunity to serve and glorify Him rather than simply returning to life as usual?

Additional Bible Reading

1. Isaiah 42:1-9 — This passage, which the sermon references, prophesies God's servant as "a light for the nations," showing that God's plan always included blessing the Gentiles through Israel's Messiah.

2. Ezekiel 34:11-16 — This passage describes God Himself coming to shepherd His lost sheep, which Jesus fulfills in His compassionate ministry to both Jews and Gentiles.

3. Genesis 12:1-3 — God's original promise to Abraham that through his descendants "all the families of the earth shall be blessed" provides the foundation for understanding the Canaanite woman's inclusion.

4. Acts 13:44-49 — This passage shows Paul and Barnabas turning to the Gentiles after Jewish rejection, explicitly quoting Isaiah about being "a light for the Gentiles" as the sermon mentioned.

5. Romans 1:14-17 — Paul explains that the gospel is "to the Jew first and also to the Greek," helping clarify the priority of Jesus' mission to Israel while affirming the gospel's universal reach.

Sermon Main Topics

I. Portentous Days That Change History and Our Lives

II. The Cluster of Amazing Miracles: Healing the Sick and Feeding the Hungry (Matthew 15:29-39)

III. The Extraordinary Conversation with the Canaanite Woman (Matthew 15:21-28)

IV. The Dawn of the Gospel to the Nations

Detailed Sermon Outline

In 1915, A.G. Gardiner was writing about World War I.

He was writing about its sudden beginning the previous year.

He says it so shocked people that it was as though with a careless remark about the weather, we stumble upon the day of judgment.

He gives a moving example.

He says, As I write in a tiny hamlet in Buckinghamshire, I look across to a little cottage and see a woman bending at work in the garden. Last July, she had three sons. Today, two of them lie in unknown graves in Flanders. The third is wounded and in the hospital. I dare say she did not so much as hear of the Sarajevo tragedy that suddenly started this war.

Yet that tragedy lighted a train of events that has wrecked her life as it has wrecked the lives of millions all over the face of Europe.

You know, there are some days that seem as familiar as can be. Everything seems normal, nothing out of the ordinary. Whether causing a warm comfort or a kind of blasé boredom, the day felt like every other day. Such days are straightforward, predictable, dependable, unremarkable. They make up the great majority of most all of our lives.

Other days are different. The ones I have in mind are few and far between.

They are portentous days.

Some great transition actually occurs, perhaps not in world history like the starting of a war, but in our own lives, like getting a driver's license, or graduating from high school, or getting married, or the birth of a child. And like we were thinking about a moment ago, though more personally they can be unusual for their difficulty, like the death of a parent or a spouse or a child. It could be a moving day. It could be the first day in a new job. It could be the day you retired.

In good ways and bad, change happens in our lives. Sometimes that change is long anticipated. Other times it's sudden.

Either way, it comes and the day, the change actually occurs. And that is one of the days then that stands out. We might have a couple of handfuls of them, maybe, in a lifetime in which significant corners have been rounded, pages turned. Whether or not we wanted them to be. The three years of public ministry of Jesus were full of such portentous days, days where the darkness was penetrated by the double light of Jesus and His amazing action in the present, again and again surprising, even shocking, and yet also lighted by ancient promises and prophecies beginning to be fulfilled.

The gospels, unlike our lives, are full of days, day after day being recounted in which history was rounding the most significant corner between the fall of Adam and Eve and the final judgment at the end of the world.

Such change supremely happened at the cross and resurrection. But the days of Jesus' public ministry were days of change. They were not familiar days or days of unremarkable boringness. They were days in which supernatural things occurred. And what's more, in which those supernatural things pointed to even greater realities that would come and which were beginning right then.

That's what the days that the second half of Matthew 15 are describing were like. Though they may have begun like our normal days, events unfolded in them which made them the kind of days that the disciples remembered for the rest of their lives and which they wrote about and which We study about today as have all Christians who've gone before us for the last 2,000 years. Our text is Matthew chapter 15, verses 21 to 39. You'll find it in our Bibles provided on page 821. You'll be helped this morning if you're not used to being here to open your Bible to that place.

And follow along and leave it open as I speak to us about this passage. Matthew, chapter 15, beginning at verse 21.

And Jesus went away from there. And withdrew to the district of Tyre and Sidon. 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.

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. He answered, I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.

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.

She said, 'Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master's table.' Then Jesus answered her, 'O woman, great is your faith. Be it done for you as you desire.' and her daughter was healed instantly.

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. Then Jesus called His disciples to Him and said, I have compassion on the crowd, because they have been with Me now three days and have nothing to eat. And I am unwilling to send them away hungry, lest they faint on the way. And the disciples said to Him, 'Where are we to get enough bread in such a desolate place to feed so great a crowd?' and Jesus said to them, 'How many loaves do you have?' They said, 'Seven, and a few small fish.' and directing the crowd to sit down on the ground, He took the seven loaves and the fish, and having given thanks, He broke them and gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the crowds. And they all ate and were satisfied.

And they took up seven baskets full of the broken pieces left over. Those who ate were 4,000 men besides women and children. And after sending away the crowds, He got into the boat and went to the region of Magadan.

Friends, as we look at this text, I want us first to notice this cluster of amazing miracles in the second half of our passage. Beginning of verse 29. And then I want us to go back up to this extraordinary conversation in the first half of our passage that sheds light on the miracles that were to come, and in fact on everything that Jesus was doing. And I pray that in our time together around God's Word, God will take this very day and make it in your own pilgrimage a day of significance and importance. And if you don't yet know Jesus, even the very day of your conversion.

Let's first go down to this collection of miracles there in chapter 15, beginning at verse 29. Let me just read this section again.

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 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. Then Jesus called His disciples to Him and said, I have compassion on the crowd, because they have been with Me now three days and have nothing to eat. And I'm unwilling to send them away hungry, lest they faint on the way.

And the disciples said to Him, 'Where are we to get enough bread in such a desolate place to feed so great a crowd? And Jesus said to them, How many loaves do you have? They said, Seven, and a few small fish. And directing the crowd to sit down on the ground, He took the seven loaves and the fish, and having given thanks, He broke them and gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the crowds. And they all ate and were satisfied.

And they took up seven baskets full of the broken pieces left over. Those who ate were 4,000 men besides women and children. And after sending away the crowds, He got into the boat and went to the region of Magadan. Well here in verse 29 to the end of the chapter we see Jesus healing the sick and feeding the hungry. This is similar to what we saw in the last chapter, in chapter 14, If you look there up in chapter 14, verse 14, that Jesus saw a great crowd and He had compassion on them and healed their sick.

And after that, Jesus feeds the 5,000.

We see here in verse 29 that this happened along the Sea of Galilee, the word there, 29, mountain can just mean hills. We understand from Mark's gospel that this took place really on the southeast side of the Sea of Galilee near what was called the Decapolis. That was an area that was part of traditional Israel, but that had been settled heavily by Gentiles and Romans with a number of prominent Roman towns in it. Anyway, here it is that we see in verses 30 and 31 that crowds come and are healed by Jesus and they marveled at all Jesus' healings. And they glorified God for them.

If you remember back in Matthew chapter 9, Jesus had done some remarkable healing around the Sea of Galilee, and these healings, perhaps even from a year or two earlier, had been remembered. So much so that the word was out that this same healer was back. And so people brought their sick to Jesus as soon as they heard that he was in the area, in their own simple way, these people. Helping their hurting family and friends to Jesus were doing a wonderful thing. I mean, just think of what that day would have been like for each one of them.

How easy was it for them to get those who were self-conscious about their affliction? Perhaps they didn't like to go out in front of people. Maybe it was even difficult to physically get them maimed there to travel some distance. How many small patiences were employed that day in carefully leading the blind, even carrying the lame? It's loving to bring people to Jesus, however we do it.

We see here in verse 30 and 31 what happens. Jesus heals them all. I mean, you look at that last phrase in verse 30, and he healed them. Now friends, we sadly are afflicted as humanity has always been with mountains and mountains of quackery about healing. And so sometimes just these words don't hit us with the thump that they should.

But so far was this from being some culturally typical quack doctor show of some traveling Greek medicine man or some faith healer like our modern faith healers that don't do this kind of stuff. They tend to take care of psychosomatic problems. You know, our backs and knees feel better. But this was having limbs supplied where there were no limbs. People who were biologically blind beginning to see.

Those who could not walk, walking. These are the things that today people claim to happen that we don't really see. But the fact that these things happened explains why the crowds were there. These things had been happening before, and so the people were flooding in. And what was Jesus doing?

He was really healing them. Now these weren't the final healings that would come to God's people in the new heavens and the new earth, when even death and its delegates would be banished completely.

These were but signs of that day's coming. The healed that day would all still die, but they were brought real relief for a time and real opportunities of renewed service to God. These were all healed in order to be given fresh opportunity to serve God with their renewed strength and health.

And real opportunities came. They began right away. We can see that last phrase in verse 31. They glorified the God of Israel. You see how these crowds here were doing just what God intended them to do.

Indeed, it was the point of Jesus' ministry. In the night before His crucifixion, looking back on His earthly ministry, back on days like this one, Jesus would say in prayer to His heavenly Father, I glorified youd. On earth. That's how He summarized His ministry. Jesus' miracles manifested His glory and invited His disciples then to believe in Him.

Jesus would soon refer to those who were believing in Him who saw one of His most famous miracles, the raising of Lazarus, as seeing His glory.

In that earlier healing of the paralytic that Matthew recounts in chapter 9, you remember what he said that the crowds who saw it did? Matthew says that they glorified God. This is the reaction, this is the response to these true healings by the power of God. What happened when Jesus healed the bent-over woman with a disabling spirit in Luke 13? We read in Luke 13: She glorified God.

Or on in Luke 17:15 when Jesus healed the leper, one of the lepers came back who was healed. And we read in Luke 17:15 when he saw that he was healed, he praised God with a loud voice. You see, such physical healing was always a means of addressing the even worse condition of idolatry. And replacing that with the worship of the only true God who is the only one deserving of all our praise. These healings were always introductions to a more profound healing that each person needs, that you today need if you have never come to Christ for forgiveness of your sins.

The Bible is clear that all of us are born separated from God. In sin, doing what we want rather than what God wants. And that's not just a collection of random actions. That reflects the attitude of our heart, an attitude of a wrong independence from God and really elevating other things, especially ourselves, above God. And what healings like these are are opportunities for people to see there's a bigger reality There's someone who made me and to whom I will give account, who has power over me, and I should get right with him.

I should turn to see what he wants, to see why he's made me, what the purpose of my life is to be. And the purpose of our lives is to know and love him. And he's provided a way to worship him through faith in Christ. Jesus lived this perfect life to trust in His heavenly Father, and He died on the cross as a substitute, providing a way for God to accept us in mercy and yet have our sins paid for if we'll repent of our sins and trust in Him. That way is made for us.

That way is made for you if you'll repent and believe today.

These healings are not all that Jesus did. He was evidently there for days teaching and healing. So these crowds around Him were, we see in this last paragraph in Matthew 15, hungry. And it's interesting that Jesus seems to have more empathy for them than do His disciples. You know, look there in verse 32.

Jesus tells the disciples of his desire to feed the people. And I love the way Jesus puts it here, I have compassion on the crowd. Did you note that? That same sentence is recorded in Mark 8 when Mark is recounting this. And if Mark is giving us Peter's reminiscence, which I think he is, and Matthew was there, then it's interesting that Matthew and Peter are both remembering Jesus's exact words there about, I have compassion on the crowd.

Friend, again, if you're here today and you're somebody who doesn't know Jesus, if the followers of Jesus have not seemed very compassionate to you, let me just apologize. We're not representing Jesus very well at that point, because something that Jesus is, is unbelievably compassionate. He was marked by compassion in the days of his earthly ministry. The stories are all over the place in the Gospels. When Jesus saw the widow with her son in Luke 7, we read that Jesus had compassion.

This is the mercy Jesus taught us to have in His famous parable of the Good Samaritan. Early in His ministry, when Jesus was not far from this place, He healed a man among the Gerasenes who had a demon. Jesus exhorted the healed man to go home to your friends and tell them how much the Lord has done for you and how He has had mercy on you. He's compassionate and merciful. Again, that's probably one of the reasons there were so many people here in these crowds at this time, bringing their sick family and friends and putting them at the feet of Jesus.

This is the kind of compassion that Jesus would show on the boy with an unclean spirit right after his transfiguration in the coming days. Or do you remember what the two blind men had cried out to Jesus back in chapter 9? Have mercy on us, Son of David. They were asking for the same kind of compassion that Jesus had shown to grieving parents and the paralyzed and those who were demon-possessed. Friends, Jesus was not like some celebrity annoyed by the paparazzi of the crowds who were coming after Him.

He was the Shepherd come to seek and save the lost. He was seeking these people. He was not trying to run and hide from them.

He is a Savior full of mercy. There is not enough need in us to empty Christ of all His compassion.

And in fact, in our passage, we see this compassion again in verse 32 as He looks at the crowds. He's just been healing them and He understands now that the hunger would be stealing upon them. The narrative quickly moves from this point to the end of the chapter in verse 33. The disciples object to the lack of food on hand and then verse 34, they discuss this with Jesus and with no further explanation, it just happens. Verse 35, He orders the crowd to sit down as if He were going to feed them.

But with what food? So then in verse 36, we read that Jesus takes their little food and from their little food, which we're told specifically, seven loaves and a few fish, he feeds them all and with more left over.

My friends, such creation of new matter is an exclusive prerogative of God.

The Gospels are full of that.

And so what happens to the people's hunger? Well, we read there, verse 37, They were all fully fed and satisfied and there was even food left over. And that was with 4,000 men not counting the women and children. And that's where Matthew leaves the story of that remarkable day with Jesus climbing in a boat and heading back closer to home on the other side of the Sea of Galilee. Do you see how Jesus glorified His heavenly Father in all this.

It's as Paul would write later to the Corinthians, Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and the God of all comfort.

But friends, it's really the first half of our passage that I think gives us some tools to understand the significance of these miracles better and more clearly because of the spoken faith we found in verses 21 to 28 in the words of the woman. Look again up at verse 21.

Matthew 15 verse 21.

And Jesus went away from there and withdrew to the district of Tyre and Sidon. 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.' but He did not answer her a word. And His disciples came and begged Him saying, 'Send her away, for she's crying out after us.' He answered, 'I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.' 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. She said, Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master's table. Then Jesus answered her, O woman, great is your faith.

Be it done for you as you desire. And her daughter was healed instantly. You know, this is the only time in all four Gospels, and this is recounted in Mark as well, where Jesus goes outside of the traditional boundaries of Israel. It's the only time. So if you know the sort of map in the back of your Bible of Israel, what's happening is He's going about 20, 25 miles northeast along the coast to Tyre and Sidon, traditionally Gentile areas.

He several times does miracles in areas in Galilee with lots of Gentiles in them, like the Decapolis, where there are dominantly Gentile people around. But this is the only record we have of Jesus going outside of Israel. You see up in verse 21 we read that Jesus went away from there, there being the seaside area of Gennesaret, just south of Capernaum, where he had been in the passage we looked at last week. And here in this unique event in Jesus' ministry, going out to the nations, here Jesus encounters this unnamed woman. And it's interesting though, Jesus goes to this area The woman comes to Jesus.

The meeting begins in verse 22 as Matthew shows us both the woman's complaint and faith. He even draws special attention to it with this little word behold. You know, it's sort of a written form of a verbal slight gasp of surprise, like behold, this Canaanite woman, you know, not your normal character in the Gospels. Look, who is this? And this woman comes crying not for herself but for another.

Her dear daughter. Matthew describes her here as a Canaanite. And friends, that's the only time this word is used in the whole New Testament. Canaanite is not so much a description of her specific nationality as it is simply to locate that she is not of the covenant people of God. She's not of the covenant people of Israel.

In Mark's parallel, he calls her a Syrophoenician woman. She's of the people native to that area. Canaanite was a kind of generic description at the time of the conquest under Joshua for all the native peoples of the land. Matthew then is simply making the point that such Gentiles were the historic enemies of God's people. And yet, here is such an one, an enemy of God's people, who becomes an object of Jesus' compassion.

He is so compassionate. But she seems to be not what we would expect of such a non-Israelite. So in verse 22 she comes crying out to Jesus, addressing Him not only as Lord, which is at least a title of great respect, but also as Son of David.

Now before this woman in the narrative of Matthew's gospel, only an angel in a dream and a couple of desperate blind men in chapter 9, and then a crowd once just as a question, use this messianic title, Jesus. It only happens one other time in His ministry, and that's again from blind men in the last week of His ministry, the blind men who see who Jesus really is.

Participating in that kind of ironic judgment on God's people. Here we see it's not the people of Nazareth that grew up with Jesus, or the King of Galilee, Herod, as we saw in chapter 14, or the religious leaders from Jerusalem, as we saw earlier in chapter 15. It's none of these people who recognize the Messiah. But it's this Canaanite woman who correctly recognizes and identifies Jesus.

There's one surprise after another in this little encounter. After she lays out her daughter's trial to this most compassionate One, how does Jesus respond?

He's silent. Look there at the beginning of verse 23, But he did not answer her a word. You might think Jesus did this out of hardness, but then you wouldn't think that if you knew Jesus. That explanation you just have to rule out immediately. He's just not like that.

All right, some have suggested He did it to test her faith. And while that could be, Jesus knew her faith. We read in John 2, He knew what was in people. He knew all people. He knew what was in a man.

No, that couldn't be the reason. Friend, when God doesn't answer our prayer obviously and immediately, it's not because He's deaf and didn't hear it. And it's not because He's bad and doesn't love us. As the song says, you, can't hurry, my God. No, you just have to wait.

You gotta trust God and give him time, no matter how long it takes. He's a God we just can't hurry. He'll be there. Don't you worry. He may not come when you want him, but he's right on time.

That's true. In this case, I think that Jesus, by silence, wasn't rebuking the woman or finding fault with her, but he was actually drawing attention to her. He was emphasizing her confession for the disciples who were listening.

You know how you can make something more powerful by leaving a space of silence after it?

The words just seem to hang in the air and gain weight as they hang there.

I think that's what Jesus was doing. With this woman, with what she had just said in her confession of who he was. He was... His silence was acting as a microphone amplifying her confession of faith.

So in verse 23, the disciples asked Jesus to send her away. Seems a little bit like their response to the hungry crowds down in verse 33, doesn't it? I wonder if you ever find yourself valuing your convenience or your comfort over other people and their needs. Send her away! She keeps yelling at us, keeps shouting!

Well, this woman was yelling and shouting for a reason. And Jesus cared about the reason. Jesus' word here in verse 24 may sound hard to some people, but it's consistent with what he had been teaching. If you remember back in chapter 10 when he sends out the apostles, he sends out the 12, he instructed them, Go nowhere among the Gentiles and enter no town of Samaritans, but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. That's a good cross-reference.

If you want to write it down in your copy of the Bible, feel free. Matthew 10, that's verses 5 and 6. So what he says to her is what he had said to his own disciples when he sent them out. It was simply a matter of how God had done things in revealing himself to Abraham and his descendants. So that Israel would be the way, the launching pad for God's work in the world.

You know, Paul would later write to the Romans in Romans 1:16 that the gospel is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. Paul wasn't saying that if you've got a Jew and a Greek standing in front of you, you need to witness to the Jewish person first. No, he's reflecting historically on how the gospel has come. The gospel has come through the Messiah of the Jews to the Jews first, and then it's historical fact that then it goes on to the nations, where it was always intended for ultimately. A specific example of this happened in the ministry of Paul and Barnabas in Acts 13.

When we read in Acts 13:46, Paul and Barnabas spoke out boldly saying, it was necessary that the word of God be spoken first to you, speaking to the Jews in Pisidian Antioch. But since you thrust it aside and judge yourselves unworthy of eternal life, Behold, we are turning to the Gentiles. For so the Lord has commanded us. And then what do they do? They quote the very passage of Isaiah that Anne Marie read to us, Isaiah 42:6, where the Lord calls his servant a light to the nations.

So at this point in his earthly ministry, Jesus had in fact come for the lost sheep of the house of Israel. They were his priority. God had promises made to them still to keep. And you can read this afternoon, if you want, very moving passage in Ezekiel 34 of God's promise to come Himself to the lost sheep to gather them. And Matthew's Gospel is especially concerned about showing us this aspect of Jesus' ministry.

Anyway, in verse 25, this woman, whom I assume had heard Jesus' statement in verse 24, So even though Jesus reinforces His priority, I've come now for the lost sheep of the house of Israel, this woman came anyway. And she knelt before Him anyway and said, Anyway, Lord, help me.

Spurgeon had ten sermons on this passage.

I asked Caleb to look up what sermon Spurgeon preached on verses 21 to 39. And when he came back and told me he'd preached 10, I thought, oh, that's interesting. But then when I found they were all on the Canaanite woman, I wasn't surprised. I mean, this is just an amazing person. Even her prayer here, he has one whole sermon just called A Prayer for Everybody.

Where he just talks about this prayer, Lord help me. I mean, can you imagine a better prayer? Praise God for this woman's insistence. She was desperate. And desperation is the origin of so many of our best prayers.

And this prayer is so plain, and it is so stripped down, that it is useful for us at all times and all places. Whoever we are, what we always need from the Lord is his help. Whatever situation we're in, who else can always help us but the Lord?

If we are going to relate to the Lord, how will we relate to him other than at least a major component of it being our need for him to help us? So this is a prayer for all times and for everybody. Lord, help us. Verses 26 and 27 are really the climax of the encounter. Verse 26, Jesus answers the woman's request very directly in a way which I think may sound more harsh to us than it would have then.

The Jews at that time referred to the Gentiles as dogs because they were ceremonially unclean. They referred to all the Gentiles. That's everybody in the world except the Jews themselves. They referred to as dogs. It's like the Greeks referred to everybody but themselves as barbarians.

There were the Greeks and then there were the barbarians. The barbarians were all of the non-Greeks in the world. So it's very typical for peoples all around the world to have language like that. Well, this is the way the Jews referred to the Gentiles, all Gentiles, all non-Jews. And the point of the saying is simply restating what Jesus had said about the priority of his mission, verse 24.

But I think this really spotlights her faith. Thank God for such women who are heroes of the faith. She's really a kind of New Testament Ruth, isn't she? You know, a sort of foreign woman who takes this kind of initiative and is insistent in very appropriate ways for her own good and really for the good of others. The amazing thing in this is how she does not raise the objections you or I might raise about the language of Jesus.

Instead, she just goes with it. She just goes right, you have come with a special relationship with the people of Israel. And I'm not contesting that. But you are so great in your mercy and so full in your feeding of the children that I'll bet you there are some crumbs that fall from that table that dogs like us can have. So she was not objecting to the priority of the Jewish mission for the Jewish Messiah, but she was so confident of the nature of the God of Israel that she knew that His provision would be full and overflowing.

Like in fact it just was about to be for the feeding of the 4,000 where there were seven basketfuls of leftovers. And so she pursued Jesus, even accepting the framework that he gave, that we today would tend to be offended at and reject the whole encounter because of. And yet she, in her faith and in her desperate need, pursued. So we come to this glorious conclusion in verse 28 where the woman, Jesus affirms the woman's faith and heals her daughter. Would Jesus, the compassionate, care about her little daughter?

Of course he would. Spurgeon again, I can no more believe that Christ will repulse a sinner than I can look up to the sun and believe that it will ever freeze me. This is what Jesus does, He heals, He saves. But He also has other priorities to pursue and complete before even more change would come. This Canaanite woman accepted all of that.

And still she saw in Jesus enough to know that the promised blessings would come and that there would be even more to overflow. One of the main things that strikes me about this woman is what a contrast she was with the religious leaders of Israel. Earlier in the chapter, who'd come down from Jerusalem, the people who were supposed to know their Bibles so well and supposed to understand them so well and were supposed to be able, therefore, to recognize the Messiah and lead the nation in accepting him so well. They are utter failures at it. And yet this Canaanite woman, she's got it exactly.

Friends, God uses unlikely vessels because He gets particular glory to Himself that way.

Well, there's so much more we could say.

In Matthew 15, taking it all in, if we step back and we look at both these passages together and really all of the whole chapter, I think what we see is some of the first days of the gospel dawning on the nations. We see as it were a kind of ultrasound of the international church that would be coming.

Remember last week the radical teaching of Jesus in chapter 15 verse 11? That set the stage for this when Jesus taught that it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but what comes out of the mouth. This defiles a person. And Mark's gospel after that adds the parenthetical note, this is to show, by this He declared all foods clean.

We considered last week that at least a large part of the purpose of the ceremonial laws was to help the Israelites to be separate from the nations around them so that they would keep their own unique God-given laws and values in preparation for the coming of the Messiah. But friends, now the Messiah was come and indeed was nearing the climax and completion of his earthly mission. And the purpose of the separation between Israel and the nations was beginning to fade away. And so this wall, not of moral holiness, that would continue between God's people and the world, but of these ceremonial distinctions that ethnically separated them. These were beginning to crumble.

And Jesus shows that by in the very chapter when the religious leaders from Jerusalem are rejecting him, he heads out to the nations and shows that there are people who will recognize him and worship him. And that's when Jesus has this unique journey out to Gentile territory and meets this harbinger, this morning star of the faithful who were to come. This unnamed Canaanite woman is one of the first rays of the dawning light of the coming international church of the church that will include those of us here who are physical children of Abraham and all the rest of us, all of us who have faith in Jesus Christ. We see that church beginning. After all, though Jesus was fulfilling ancient promises to the descendants of Abraham, God had blessed them, according to Genesis 12, in order to be a blessing to all nations.

All nations were always to be included in the ultimate program of salvation. So in Matthew's gospel, who is it that first heralds Jesus? It's the wise men from the East, even as the wise men of Israel would ignore and reject Him. So Jesus said to the chief priests and the elders of the people of Jerusalem during his final days of public teaching, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people producing its fruit. Jesus told parables celebrating the virtues of non-Jews.

And Jesus' final command in the gospel of Matthew would be to instruct his disciples to go and make disciples of all nations. This most Jewish of gospels is an arrow clearly pointed to the nations. And this Canaanite woman is a harbinger of all that was to come in that. The Messiah, the Son of David, had come to bring the spiritually dead world to life. And it almost seemed as if the Gentile tombs were beginning to crack open before the tombs of Israel.

That's the larger picture that's going on with these miracles of healing and feeding at the end of the chapter. They are more examples of Gentile faith. The Canaanite woman is only the crack in the dam. It seems from Mark's gospel that these miracles of healing and feeding took place in the region of the Decapolis, which is a largely Gentile area. That would explain a few things in these verses.

Some people have wondered, why would there be a separate feeding when he just had a feeding of the 5,000? This miracle is so much like the other one. Ah, yes, but it's in this different place. It's done among the Gentiles, it seems. Look at where it is, in the region of the Decapolis.

Look there in verse 31, who is praised for these healings, the God of Israel, almost makes it seem like Matthew is pointing that out as distinct from what people might normally mean by God there. Or in verse 33, the disciples hadn't forgotten what Jesus had done a few days or weeks before in feeding the 5,000. Maybe that wasn't a problem at all. Maybe they remembered that great miracle. Maybe they just assumed that Jesus would never make such a provision of feeding in the wilderness for the Gentiles, as if they were His people as much as the people of Israel were His people.

More than one commentator points out a couple of details that distinguish these two miraculous feedings. One is the Hebrew background word that's used for basket in chapter 14. And then you find out in the Greek there's actually a different word used for basket in our passage in chapter 15. And there's an even more clear detail of how many baskets were left over after everyone was fed. You remember how many basketfuls of leftovers there were in chapter 14 with the feeding of the 5,000?

Twelve. Yeah, and how many in our passage? Seven. So in fact, Jesus himself points that out. If you look on in chapter 16, in verses 9 and 10, Jesus points out that detail to the disciples.

He asks them so that they'll have to give the answer. He wants them to remember, he points this out. What would that twelve be associated with? The twelve the 12 tribes of Israel because this was a feeding of the Jews. But the seven, well it's not twelve, perhaps it's also the number for completion for everyone else.

The eras of salvation history were coming to a decisive change. Circumcision was about to be washed away by baptism and the Passover was about to be replaced by the meal of the New Covenant that Jesus would establish in His own blood and that we hope to celebrate especially tonight.

To our Jewish friends here today who own and love the Messiah, I am delighted that in God's providence you are part of this congregation.

And friends, I would just ask you to see in the prayers of this Canaanite woman and the deliverance of these healed and fed Gentiles, you're seeing the lost sheep of all the nations beginning to be brought in with countless others crowding in behind them, including many of us here today, all objects of this compassionate Christ. Who know ourselves to be loved by Him, who came, yes, first for the Jews, but then through them, He would be a blessing to all the nations. We're seeing just the first glimpses of that in our passage this morning. Let's pray.

Lord God, you, ways are marvelous.

Lord, how did this Canaanite woman know the truth about the Lord Jesus?

It can only be by providential circumstances as yous brought to her knowledge of the as she heard the truth about the Messiah and as your Holy Spirit gave her understanding as you would give to Peter of Jesus' true identity. Thank you for her insistence. Thank you for the love for her daughter that joined with her recognition of you impelled her. And makes her an encouragement for us to come to Jesus.

Lord, we thank youk for your marvelous providences. Thank youk for the way youy teach us the truth. Teach all of us the truth about Jesus. We pray this not just for those gathered here, but, Lord, for all the others. Who are alive today, made in your image, within the sound of your gospel.

And Lord, for those who are not yet within the sound of your gospel, would you use us and other gospel believing assemblies to call out from us those who will go and tell the good news of Jesus so that all will hear and so that all may come. We ask in Jesus' name, Amen.