8/24/25 Matthew 15:21-28 “Satisfied with a Glance”

22 Aug 8/24/25 Matthew 15:21-28 “Satisfied with a Glance”

8/24/25    Matthew 15:21-28        “Satisfied with a Glance”

I want to start out on a more serious note this morning.  We have been having some terrible riots around the country the last few months.  There have been people killed during these riots and all of it is absolutely senseless.  Most types of shootings like this are senseless.  Also, there is no reason or excuse good enough to justify the riots and looting that have followed.  This is really more than senseless as they are destroying their own neighborhoods.  Many times, agitators are hired to do this.  I do not begin to know why these types of things happen but I think there has to be underlying reasons that we don’t want to talk about.  I hope you know where I’m going with this and I haven’t changed my mind one little bit.  The biggest reason that these riots happened is that our society is not Christian!  We want to blame our President!  He is not at fault!  We are at fault and probably you are at fault.  It is because we are turning our backs on Jesus Christ.  If you think I’m wrong on this then read your Bibles.  It is all right there in front of you.  There was a recent study done on so-called Christians who think so-called same sex marriages are ok.  These people also thought pornography, cohabitation, hook-ups, adultery, multiple partners and abortions were ok.  Who knows what they thought about stealing and murder!  You can have whatever opinion you want on any of this but my point is that we are on this slope that will lead us to places we don’t want to be and we don’t seem to care.  As a matter of fact, many think that these are good things to have happen.  When I raise these points in public and I am usually laughed at.  If they are nice, I’m told I’m totally out of touch.  People, it isn’t just our churches that are in trouble, it’s our whole country.  All I ask is that you read your Bibles and question some of the ways of our world.  You may wonder what this has to do with our Scripture today and the answer is plenty.  Jesus took His disciples to a place where Jews didn’t go and were unwelcome.  Let’s see if Jesus has any answers for us today.

I would guess that if you drove through any of these riot torn neighborhoods before the riots, they would have seemed like pretty nice neighborhoods.  All was quiet and normal.  It is like when Harry Truman was in the White House.  They were going to do a little remodeling and they found that the whole White House was structurally unfit for habitation.  The beams and rafters or whatever they are called had been sawed into so many times for remodel jobs over the years that they didn’t have the strength to hold up the ceiling.  The place was starting to fall apart and floors were sagging.  It was immediately decided that the Truman family would move across the street to the Blair House until the White House could be totally gutted and new steel beams be installed.  You see, the White House looked great on the outside, but on the inside, it was falling apart, something like some of these neighborhoods.  But this is still never a reason to riot.

And this is kind of where Jesus is today.  Let us recap a little before we get down to the basics.  Jesus is in the region of Tyre and Sidon.  This area is outside the realm of the Jewish religion to the north.  This is a pagan area where Jesus has taken the disciples.  There would have to be some serious extenuating circumstances to have a Jew come to this area because as we have stated before, the Jews and pagans didn’t like each other.  So here come Jesus and his band of Jews into an area where they aren’t welcome.  I would guess that as long as they are just traveling, things would appear to be ok and normal but underneath this veneer of being ok there would be turmoil.  It is like the White House.  It looks ok but underneath it is a mess.

I ran across something as a little sidebar.  I don’t think that we appreciate how much these two groups of people hated each other.  The pagans or Gentiles thought that the Jewish people were overly religious, dirty and they smelled.  They didn’t like anything about them because they usually stayed off by themselves and wouldn’t associate with any Gentiles.  Of course, the Jews thought the pagans were extremely unclean.  They have uncovered pools that were in the Jewish homes called ‘Mikvahs.’  These pools were used to ceremoniously wash off the filthiness of items they had to purchase from the Gentiles.  It is no wonder they never got along.

Another thing I want us to note here is that the disciples who had been with Jesus for close to 3 years now, really weren’t very close to understanding Jesus.  We see this time and again in the Gospels where the disciples don’t quite get it.  When Jesus calms the storm they wonder, ‘Who is this man?’  They doubt that He can feed 5000 people or 4000 people but He does this easily.  Here they doubt as to why they are deep in enemy territory.  At this point I would guess that they might be getting uneasy.

We are much the same way.  I find that I’m getting worse at this as I get older.  I like things to be status quo but that isn’t the way of the world or the way of Jesus.  Things are always changing and we have to come to grips with these changes.  However, I don’t mean to say that the Scriptures change or that Jesus changes so that He can adapt to society.  What I mean is that He changes us so that we can come up with ways to help society change to the ways of Jesus and the Bible.

We have many people in our midst today that don’t get it.  They try to follow Jesus but they can only go so far because the devil makes them want to follow the ways of our broken world instead.  We have people in our churches who think that communion has to be done a certain way or only for certain people.  We also have people who think that we are not to try to spread the Good News of our Lord Jesus Christ to the Muslims or the Hindus because it might offend them.  The list goes on and on.  I would go on to say that many causes and new ideas need to be scrutinized closely because they might be the workings of Satan.  He is very clever at disguise and we need to be vigilant.  Anyway, we know all about these things.  One of the things we talked about last week is that we can go down these paths in the wrong direction and not even realize it.  So be careful in all you do.

Now let’s get down to the part where Jesus calls this woman a dog or at least He makes that comparison.  Now before we can talk about this, we have to know what dogs were in this society.  The Jews hated dogs!  They were unclean.  If you know anything about dogs then you know that they will bury their food so that it begins to decay before they eat it.  Of course this made them unclean in the eyes of the Jews.  This also holds true for Muslims who even today will scatter if you bring a dog in amongst them.

I remember when I was a kid, every farm had a dog.  Many times, they were bigger dogs that were used for herding and keeping varmints away from the farm.  Sometimes the owners were a little neglectful of these dogs and they became quite savage.  Many of these dogs were highly protective of their farms and would attack anyone or thing that came on their territory.  They were vicious.

These are the types of dogs usually thought of when we talk of this passage but that isn’t really what happened.  There is another word for dog and that is what was used here.  It is the kind of small dog that royalty had.  These would be the soft cuddly dogs that we have for lap dogs today.  They were gentle and tamed.  The other kind of dog was the kind that ran wild everywhere.  They would grab anything that wasn’t tied down.

Jesus is referring to the Jewish people as the children who let the crumbs fall to the floor so that the nice tame dogs or Gentiles would also get something to eat.  Jesus is testing everyone hearing this.  He is testing the disciples who don’t get it.  This is a Gentile woman who is asking for this.  Not only is she a Gentile but she is a woman.  Women were down trodden at this time of history.

Now notice what the disciples want to do.  They are trying to get rid of her because she is a she plus she is a pagan.  They really don’t want anything to do with her.  They want to send her away because she is a pest.  She is getting in the way.  They don’t get it!

I think that we are often times like this also.  I think we are doing a much better job of it than most but we still have the tendency to drive by someone who is in trouble just because they are dirty or of a different race or a combination of things that make them not like us.  One of the things that the modern church is really guilty of is that we don’t go into our neighborhoods and help people.  It is much better if we just give some money or if we send it to a faraway mission.  We don’t want to know about the hurting in our own area because then we might have to do something.  We do the same things as the disciples were doing.  This is a huge learning moment for these disciples.  They were going to learn what missions were all about through this poor foreign woman.

Now what about this poor woman?  Her daughter is suffering horribly from some sort of demon possession.  In our modern world, we don’t like to think of any disease as demon possession.  Many say demons are impossible because we have names of diseases now, at least some of them.  I have to disagree because I have seen possession first hand and it isn’t pretty.  People will come to me as a last-ditch effort to rid themselves from the devil.  People, demon possession is very real and many disorders and diseases are caused by this evil creature.  If medicine would ever wake up to this, they would have much more success.

Anyway, this mother is desperate.  Notice how she addresses Jesus.  She calls Him, Son of David.  This would be a Jewish greeting that this Gentile woman wouldn’t know much about but she was ready to try anything.  Her baby is sick.  She is at the end of her rope.  Jesus is her last call for help.  Moments later she says, “Lord, help me!”  Now she is appealing directly to God by calling Jesus ‘Lord.’ For some reason she knows who Jesus really is!

Then Jesus says the famous saying, “It is not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to their dogs.”  The children were the Jews and the dogs were the rest of the people, the Gentiles.  Remember how Paul put it last week.  Jesus came to save the Jews first but that didn’t work out so well because they had hard hearts.  They loved their society too much.  They loved being God’s chosen people to the point that they were now lost.  Therefore, Jesus takes the message of salvation to the Gentiles so that the Jews would get jealous and come back to God.  And this works to some extent as the disciples are learning and the pagan woman is coming to faith.

The woman tells Jesus that she would take even a crumb if it was from Jesus.  She will be satisfied with the touching of a His hem or with a glance her way.  She would be satisfied with anything as long as it was from Jesus.  Once again, we have a healing that takes place because a person has great faith.  In this case the person is really a non-person in their society.

Our faith also needs to be honed to this point.  I really doubt if there are many people in the area who would be satisfied with a glance or a nod from Jesus.  I say this because it is very rare that I go into a restaurant and I see anyone pray before their meal.  I say this because of the language I hear when I’m out in the community.  I say this because our churches are basically empty on Sunday mornings.  If even 50% of our small communities attended church every Sunday, we wouldn’t have near enough room for them.  These are all faith problems.  We seem to have more faith in ourselves than the one who created anything and everything we see about us.

I remember one time when we had movie night in our churches. Once a month we would gather for some movie that would prove to you that Jesus Christ is for real and He loves you more than you know.  This is what our reading today is all about.  Things weren’t what they seemed.  The disciples were ready to cast us out.  The woman was persistent in her faith which is what we need to practice and perfect.  When we are faithful like this woman, then Jesus opens the doors of heaven for us and He lets the blessings pour out on us.  This is His promise.

There are many things wrong with our world and the news media would have us think it is hopeless.  However, I want to tell you that this is far from the truth.  Things are not what they seem because we have Jesus Christ and He will take care of us.  The world can’t see Him because they don’t know how to look.  They don’t believe.  But we believe and I want you to believe this.  Jesus Christ will win in the end.  There is no doubt about it.  Jesus wins and He will take you with Him where ever He goes.  That is His promise to you.  That is Jesus telling you that He is with you even today.  He will never let you go.  He will never stop loving you.  I thank the Lord and I praise Him for first loving us.   Let’s pray.