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In the name of Jesus, amen.
Dear saints of God, if I’ve learned something as a pastor, I’ve learned that it is often more difficult to watch someone suffer than to suffer yourself. There’s a prayer that comes from those who are suffering: it’s this, “Lord, help me.” But the prayer that comes from those who are watching people suffer is like this: “Lord, why?” And maybe even more, there’s probably not a worse suffering for a Christian than to see those that they love—children or grandchildren or parents or brothers or sisters or aunts or cousins—wander from the faith, wander from church, wander from the Lord, quit believing and quit trusting in Christ, to quit coming to church, to grandchildren that aren’t baptized. This is just a heartbreaking thing for Christians. You’d rather lose your own life than to have those that you love lose their faith.
As I’ve sat and prayed and thought about this, I think that there are two particular passages in Scripture that give us comfort. One of the problems, right, is we think, “Well, look, here’s this person that I love, and they don’t come to church. I try to talk about the things of God, and they just ignore them or they’re just not interested. They won’t come and sit with me in church, and so they won’t hear the Word of God. If they can’t hear the Word of God, how is the Lord Jesus going to rescue them and save them and deliver them? How is it going to happen?”
Now I want us to hold onto two particular passages of Scripture, and these are the passages that I like to call Jesus’ long-distance miracles, where Jesus heals someone at a great distance. The first is Matthew chapter 8, remember where the centurion comes to Jesus and says, “Could you come and heal my servant at home, paralyzed and about to die?” Jesus says, “Lead the way, let’s go.” The centurion says, “No, Lord, you don’t need to come into my house; you just speak the word and my servant will be healed. I’m a man with authority; I say to this servant, ‘Soldier, go,’ and that one ‘come here,’ and they follow and obey orders except for the one who is paralyzed. But I know that you have an even greater authority than that. You just say the word and my servant will be healed.” Jesus says in very similar words to what he will use this morning, “Great is your faith; let it be so as you desired.” And at that moment, the servant was healed at a great distance.
In this way, when we come to church, not only are we here so that Jesus can deal with us, teach us, rebuke us, and comfort us, and give us His courage and His wisdom and fill us with His Spirit. Not only are we here for that, but we are also bringing in our prayers those whom we love who are not here. We are bringing them before Jesus, and we’re calling in His mercy, and we’re calling in His help and we’re saying, “Lord, heal them also.”
I want you to think about this when you come to communion. In fact, gentlemen, if you have a pocket on your shirt, you can even write the names of those people that you love and put it right there in your pocket and bring them with you up to the rail and up to the altar and say, “Lord, they belong to you; I’m giving them to you; heal them, rescue them, deliver them, look kindly on them.” The Lord loves to answer that prayer; He loves that work of intercession. In fact, we’re going to have time in the prayer today. I talked to Pastor Davis and Pastor LeBlanc about this, and we’ll add time in the prayer of the church every week for a time to just pause and to bring those names before the Lord, those that we wish were here, and to say, “Lord, we’re bringing them to you so you can rescue them.”
The second passage that gives us this long-distance miracle is the passage that we have before us in Matthew chapter 15, where Jesus has gone up to Tyre and Sidon. Seemingly, He’s gone up there for this purpose, so that He might meet this Canaanite woman whose daughter is severely oppressed by a demon. Can you imagine that? Can you just imagine the home life? Can you imagine the conversation? She’s talking to her daughter, and in one moment she’s sweet and kind, and in the next moment she’s raging and violent. The demon has her, and she’s tried everything, but she heard that there is in Israel a Messiah, a Savior, Christ, the Son of David, who can heal and can deliver.
Both Matthew and Mark give us this account. Matthew gives us more details than Mark, but Mark gives us a couple of things that Matthew doesn’t, and here’s an important one. Mark tells us—sorry, reverse that. Mark gives us this detail: Mark says that the woman heard of Christ, and that’s key. She heard the preaching of this Messiah. She heard the word about Jesus, and she believed it. She trusted the Word. Her faith was born of the Word. Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of Christ. She heard that Word, and she believed that Word, and she went to find this one that she had heard preached. She came up to Him and prayed, “Lord, Son of David, have mercy on me. My daughter is severely demonized.”
Now here’s the beginning of a contest, and this is important because as we bring our prayers to Jesus—not only for ourselves, but also our prayers for other people and those that we love—as we bring those prayers before Him, it is not, let’s just say it like this, it is not easy. What’s about to happen to this woman is, I do not think, how she expected things to go. She finds the one that she heard of—this Jesus, this friend of sinners, this one who’s filled with compassion, this one who loves the whole world, this one who’s healing people and rescuing people. She found him. You can imagine that she sees him at a distance and she starts running, “Aha, he’s there! This is the one! I can’t wait! I’ve been hoping and longing for this moment that I could meet him.”
She runs up to him and she prays, “Lord, Son of David, have mercy on me. Help my daughter.” And Jesus doesn’t say a thing. He doesn’t even acknowledge that she’s there; He completely ignores her. He answered her—this is what it says in the text—”He answered her not a word.” Now begins the contest. Now begins the struggle. Now begins the prayer. And it’s going to be something like this: Is this Canaanite woman going to believe the word that she heard preached? Or is she going to believe what she sees right in front of her? Is she going to walk by faith or is she going to walk by sight?
Jesus ignores her completely. So she says, “Okay, I know what to do.” I see He’s got some disciples there; I’m going to go ask them. So she goes and she starts asking the disciples, “Hey, can you help me? Could you get me in front of Jesus? Could you go and ask him if he could help my daughter?” And she’s pestering the disciples. This is what Jesus teaches us to do—to be pestering in prayer, to knock and not stop. So she does it. She’s the perfect example of this. She goes around to all the disciples, and Jesus still is ignoring her.
Finally, the disciples get so frustrated that they go to Jesus and they say, “Could you send her away? She won’t stop.” How do they say it? “She keeps crying out after us.” Now what I can’t tell—I used to think that the disciples were just saying, “Could you get rid of her?” I’m starting to think that the disciples might be saying, “Could you help her?” And in that way, get rid of her? I’m not sure. But the disciples come and intercede for her, and here comes round two. If round one was the silent treatment, here’s round two, which is even worse. Jesus still doesn’t talk to the woman, but He says to the disciples, “I came only for the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”
In other words, I’m not here for you. Jesus again looks like He’s sending her away. He again looks like He’s not answering her prayers. Now we might wonder, “Jesus, if you’re only here for the lost sheep of the house of Israel, then what are you doing in Tyre and Sidon, huh?” And I think this lady’s on to Him. I think this woman has a sense that she’s just not going to let go. But I’m not sure I would have made it past round one. I think if I would have come up to Jesus in this great need and I would have cried out to Him, and He just completely ignored me, I would have been like, “Okay, fine.” I would have left and turned around. But certainly now, if I finally got the disciples to bring my case to His attention and His response was, “I didn’t come for the Gentiles; I came only for the lost sheep of the house of Israel,” in other words, “Tell her she’s out of luck.”
I think I would have said, “Okay, I’m walking away,” but she does not. She follows Him. In fact, here’s another detail that Mark gives us; it’s not in Matthew. Jesus goes into a house, and she follows Him into the house. She falls down at His feet, and she worships Him. That’s what the Gospel of Matthew is about—the worship of Jesus. We worship Jesus. She falls down and worships, “Lord,” and she prays the same prayer that Peter prayed last week when he was sinking in the water, “Lord, help me! Help me! You can do it! You will do it! Help me!”
And then Jesus finally turns to her, and this is the hardest yet. Jesus says, “Is it right to take the food from the children and give it to the dogs?” First, you ignore me, and then you tell me that you’re not for me, and then you call me dog. This is exactly what the woman was waiting for, exactly what she was looking for, exactly what she was hoping for. She’s not offended; she’s not put off; she’s not troubled by it. She says, “Yes, Lord, but even the dogs eat the scraps that fall from the master’s table.” In fact, that word “master” there is the word “Lord.” Even the dogs eat the scraps that fall from the Lord’s table.
If you call me a dog, great! I’ll be the dog under the table. Just give me the stuff that the kids don’t want to eat. Just give me the crumbs; that’s all I’m after. Because your crumbs are better than the devil’s feasts. Your scraps are better than the world’s delicacies. Your crumbs are all I’m after; I’ll be a dog in this master’s house.
And can you see it? I hope you can see it, as Jesus, who I imagine this whole time has been stone-faced and barely looking at her and severe, maybe even angry with a furrowed brow, now turns to her. His face softens, and He smiles and looks at her, saying with the tenderest kindness, most loving voice, “Oh woman,”—it’s the same word that Jesus uses when He looks at Mary from the cross—”Oh woman, great is your faith.” He commends her like He commends no one else in all of the Bible. “Let it be done for you as you desire.” She catches Jesus in His Word, and that’s exactly what He wants. And at that very moment, her daughter is healed.
I imagine her getting home, and there’s her daughter there to meet her. She says, “What happened? I was in terrible mourning; I was being tossed every which way, and then all of a sudden, I’m free, and I’m myself again. What happened?” And she tells her daughter how she went to Jesus. “What? He didn’t talk to you? And then what happened?” Then she goes, “The dog? He called you a dog? And then what happened?” She says, “I’m happy to be the dog.” And then what happened?
“And then He looked at me with a smile on His face, and He told me that you were rescued, and I knew it was true because His Word is true. He loves me, and He loves you, and He came to rescue us, and He came to die for us, and now we are going to live forever with Him, that all of our sins are forgiven. He gives us a clean conscience; Jesus, that Savior, that Son of David, He is our Savior too, our Deliverer too, the Rescuer of our home.” And they would rejoice and sing His praises.
Well, I mean, can you—dear saints—one day we are going to meet this woman and her daughter in the resurrection, and they’re going to tell us the story themselves. They’ll be like, “Well, pastor kind of got it wrong about what happened when I got home,” but we’ll be able to tell. Can you imagine? Because Jesus is saving them just like He’s saving us, and rescuing them just like He’s rescuing us.
But it’s not easy. Prayer is not easy. We pray, and it sounds like Jesus is saying no. We pray, and it feels like He’s completely ignoring us. We pray, and it looks like He hasn’t even heard our prayer and He hasn’t even tried to answer them. But we walk by faith, not by sight, and we believe this Word, and it’s true for you, and it’s true for those you love, true for those that you’re praying for. Jesus came to save sinners. He is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. He is the one who loves the world so much that He carries our sins and our sorrows, that He’s loaded down with our failures and our guilt and our law-breaking, and He suffers all of it for you and for those that you’re praying for.
It might not come when you expect it. The answer might not come soon enough for us, but the Holy Spirit has given us this Canaanite woman as our teacher, and by this text has enrolled us in prayer 101. Maybe it’s prayer 407, I’m not sure. We hold on to the Lord according to His Word, and we don’t let go. We trust the promise that Christ died for sinners. In that Word, we live and we die. In that Word, we weep and we fight. In that Word, we rejoice and sing, and with that Word, we pray. We trust that the Lord hears our prayers. It looks a lot like no, but underneath all those no’s is the Lord’s yes, and we hold on to it with our whole heart.
May God grant us this spirit and this confidence in the name of Jesus, amen. The peace of God which passes all understanding guard your hearts and minds through Jesus Christ our Lord, amen.