Moments with the Master: Canaanite Woman

Who Let the Dogs In?

Matthew 15:21-28

Opening Words: I read recently there are approximately 800,000 words in the English language. Don’t feel bad if you don’t know them all. Approximately 300,000 of those words are technical in nature. The average person only knows about 10,000 words and uses only half that number each day. However, it is not the number of words we know that matters. What matters is the numbers of discussions we have with the people in our lives. How many people do you talk to on an average day?

Throughout the season of Lent we are going to be looking at various discussions that individuals had with Jesus. This morning we look at the Canaanite woman’s moment with the master. Her story is a story of true faith. May God give you ears to hear this story from the fifteenth chapter of Matthew, verses twenty-one through twenty-eight. Let me call this message, “Who Let the Dogs In?”

Matthew 15:21-28 21Leaving that place, Jesus withdrew to the region of Tyre and Sidon. 22A Canaanite woman from that vicinity came to him, crying out, "Lord, Son of David, have mercy on me! My daughter is suffering terribly from demon-possession." 23Jesus did not answer a word. So his disciples came to him and urged him, "Send her away, for she keeps crying out after us." 24He answered, "I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel." 25The woman came and knelt before him. "Lord, help me!" she said. 26He replied, "It is not right to take the children's bread and toss it to their dogs." 27"Yes, Lord," she said, "but even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters' table." 28Then Jesus answered, "Woman, you have great faith! Your request is granted." And her daughter was healed from that very hour.

They tell me Bess Houdini held her last séance on October 31, 1936 on top of the Knickerbocker Hotel in New York City. She had held a séance on that same date annually for the past ten years. She had hoped to contact her deceased husband, Harry, who died on Halloween ten years earlier. Finally admitting he was gone, she blew out the candle that had burned by his picture for a decade and said, “Ten years is long enough to wait for a man.” Bess Houdini was a spiritualist. She believed you could contact the dead by a gifted or trained medium. She wanted her husband to tell her about the afterlife. That is what she believed. What do you believe?

By your presence here this morning you are telling me that you believe in Jesus, the Christ, the son of the living God! The Bible tells us his story. His mother was a young woman by the name of Mary. His biological father was God. His step-father was a carpenter by the name of Joseph from the town of Nazareth. Mary and Joseph must have been wonderful parents because the scriptures tell us Jesus never committed a single sin. His perfection made him the perfect sacrifice for the sins of the world. You know the painful story. Jesus died on a cross, a Roman form of execution, on a Friday afternoon, like a common criminal. All the people who believed in him mourned that day but their tears would not last long. On Sunday a handful of women came to pay their final respects and made a discovery that changed world history. The once dead Jesus had come back to life! I can not tell you how you bring a dead man back to life but I can tell you what the New Testament says. It says all of us of faith walked out of that tomb with him. It for that reason I have said it a million times. It all begins and ends with Jesus. Because of Jesus your past mistakes can be forgiven. Because of Jesus death has no hold on you. Someday you are going to heaven. Because of Jesus your life can have meaning and purpose today. And all of God’s people said, “Amen!“ Your belief in the resurrected Jesus is not just important, it is indispensable.

We are introduced to a woman who also really believed in Jesus. We are in the fifteenth chapter of Matthew. What the text tells us is that Jesus was traveling in the region of Tyre and Sidon. It is Gentile country, northwest of Galilee. In that foreign land the crowds are not so thick so Jesus has an opportunity to teach the disciples about the Kingdom of God. What we find in this passage is a little test for the disciples. In a certain way Jesus used this desperate woman to test the twelve.

If you use your sanctified imagination you can imagine the scene. She came up to Jesus to ask him for some help. That is not exactly accurate. She doesn’t ask Jesus for help, she begged Jesus for help. Who can blame her? Her daughter is a demonic. She begs Jesus to exercise the demons. Let there be no doubt about it. Jesus has the power to heal her but Jesus takes this opportunity to give the disciples a little test. To say it bluntly they fail the test. But this foreigner passes the test. Jesus came to save all people. In the end her daughter is healed. I have read this story countless times and I have to admit that the one verse that always grabs my attention is verse 28. It says, “Then Jesus answered, ‘Woman, your faith is great.’“ Those words must have been magic to her ears. I believe that is the one compliment we all long to hear.

Faith is nothing to be dismiss. The greatest minds in the history of the church have tried to explain the true meaning of faith to us for generations. I came across a list of great quotes this week on faith. Maybe one of them will resonate in you.

1. E. Stanley Jones said, “Faith is not merely holding on to God - it is God holding on to you.”

2. Augustine said, “Faith is to believe what we do not see; and the reward of this faith is to see what we believe.”

3. George Muller said, “Faith begins where man's power ends.”

4. John Calvin said, “Faith is not a distant view but a warm embrace of Christ.”

5. Martin Luther said, “The true, living faith, which the Holy Spirit instills into the heart, simply cannot be idle.”

Today, I want to talk about faith. I want to talk about your faith. Do the people in your life consider you a person of mature faith? There are really three kinds of faith. My goal is to help you develop these three kinds of faith in your life. The Canaanite woman had developed all three kinds of faith in her life and Jesus commended her. I hope the master will commend you someday. So if you are ready to look at the three kinds of faith say, “Amen!”

Knowing Faith

The first kind of faith is knowing faith. Do you have knowing faith? The answer is “yes.” Everyone has knowing faith, it is the most basic level of faith. You may want to call it intellectual faith. It is not necessarily spiritual in nature. You need a certain level of knowing faith to exist in the world. Knowing faith is simply the mental process to know that something is true. It can be acquired in three ways. First, you can accept the word of an authority. Second, you can draw the knowledge from experience. Or three, you can use your sense of reason. We use our knowing faith all the time. For example, we know Abraham Lincoln was the sixteenth president of the United States because somebody told us. We know the seasons change in Ohio because we have experienced the changes. That is knowing faith.

The Prince of Grenada was sentenced to a life of solitary confinement in Madrid’s ancient prison called, “The Place of the Skull.” Everyone knew the simple truth. No one ever came out alive. The prince was given one book to read - the Bible. He lasted thirty-three years in that prison before he died. He read the Bible cover to cover hundreds of times. When they cleaned his cell out they found marking he had scraped in the wall. They read: Psalm 118:8 is the middle verse in the Bible; Ezra 7:21 contains all the letters of the alphabets, except j. Esther 8:9 is the longest verse in the Bible; the longest word in the Bible only has five syllables. The prince knew the Bible but what good did it do him? Knowledge is not enough. Faith must be lived! If you understand knowing faith is not enough say, “Amen!”

Showing Faith

The second find of faith is showing faith. Do you have showing faith? Showing faith is demonstrated in the way that we live our lives. It is not enough to say that Jesus is your Lord and Savior, you must demonstrate that Jesus has made a difference in your life. It is showing faith that Paul writes of in First Thessalonians 1:3, “We continually remember before our God and father your work produced by faith.” Showing faith demonstrates to the world what you say you believe is true. C. H. Spurgeon claimed that 98 percent of the people he met-- including the criminals he visited in England's prisons--told him that they believed the Bible to be true. But the vast majority had never made a personal, life-changing commitment to Jesus Christ. For them, "believe" was not an active verb.

That was not the story of Hudson Taylor. During an especially trying time in the work of the China Inland Mission, Hudson Taylor wrote to his wife, "We have twenty-five cents--and all the promises of God! That is showing faith! Do you have showing faith? Are you showing the world that your faith is sincere? If you have showing faith say, “Amen!”

Saving Faith

The third kind of faith is saving faith. Do you have saving faith? The Canaanite woman with the demon possessed daughter had saving grace. As a matter of fact the Canaanite woman has all three kinds of faith. She had knowing faith, she knew Jesus was the answer to her problem. She had showing faith, she begged Jesus for help. She had saving faith, she completely surrendered to his will. She knew what she wanted but she was open to his leading. She had saving faith. Do you have saving faith? Have you surrendered everything to Him?

History tells us Napoleon was inspecting his troops before a great battle. Standing before him were three divisions of soldiers. When he looked into the faces of the first division each one was a stranger. Napoleon said to one of his generals, "These men I know nothing about." Then he looked into the faces of the men in the second division. These men had only been with him a short time. They knew something of march, bivouac, and battlefield, he said: "These men I think I can trust. Finally he turned to a division of troops who had been with him in all his campaigns. They were the veterans of his army. They had been baptized in blood and fire in many a fierce and deadly struggle. As they stood before him with set lips and stern countenances, ready and waiting for the onset of the coming battle, the great commander turned from them with a heart pulsating with pride and confidence, and said quietly to his officers, "These men I know I can trust."

When Jesus looks into our faces what does he see? Does he see the face of strangers? Does he see the faces of distant followers, new comers? Or when he looks in our faces does he see men and women, who he can trust? Existing in our world today is a spiritual battle. Jesus isn’t just looking for people who just have knowing faith. Jesus isn’t just looking for people with showing faith. Jesus is looking for men and women who have saving faith. People who are ready to follow his command. When Jesus looks at you what kind of faith does he see?