Faith & Femininity

Introduction

Matthew 15: 21-28
²¹ And Jesus went away from there and withdrew to the district of Tyre and Sidon.  ²² 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.”  ²³ 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.”  ²⁴ He answered, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”  ²⁵ But she came and knelt before him, saying, “Lord, help me.”  ²⁶ And he answered, “It is not right to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.”  ²⁷ She said, “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.”  ²⁸ 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 morning, I am held captive before the faith of a woman and I wonder what justice my words could do to exalt her faith and magnify her femininity. How poor are our measuring sticks on piety when we glorify the intellect and are dismissive of the meek and lowly.
If Christ were a mountain, then faith is the only ally that can help us scale these slopes. What the knowledge of the scribes and the intelligence of the Pharisees could not achieve, what the strength of the mob and the mocking of the townsmen could not achieve, what the power of Herod and the threat of Rome could not achieve, this lowly woman did on her knees. As Charles Spurgeon put it, “The Lord of Glory surrendered to the faith of [this] woman”.
O how awfully mistaken the feminist world is today in thinking that by becoming more like men they can achieve more. In this woman, we see the glory of womanhood, the power of submission and the irresistible allure of faith. Everything about what she does here is commendable.
Our Lord is not disposed to giving you whatever your heart may desire, but only in those things where your heart desires rightly. And when a woman so adorned in feminine glory bows before Christ, and asks for mercy, for help, for the fulfilment of the promises, for whatever her heart rightly desires, our Lord is pleased to surrender to her faith.
The glory of a woman is not found in her similarities with a man. The things that distinguish her from a man, the things that the world is trying to eradicate, those things are what make her a woman. The world sees the fact that the woman came second in the order of creation when compared to the man, that men are called to lead their wives while women are called to submit to their husbands, that they are referred to as the weaker vessel in 1 Peter 3:7; the world sees all of this with disgust.

• What needs fixing in such a worldview is people’s theology. Before we can attempt to fight for women’s true rights and women’s justice, we need to understand what a woman is.
• The solution to the genuine problems that women face in society is not to make them the same as men in every way, or even to make them like men in most ways. The solution is to make them like the women of the Bible. To that end, we must stand our ground and put in all our effort.
  But the world does not like the biblical woman. The curse of the fall runs deep within their veins, and the imprint of that mentality exists in the mind of many Christian women as well.
  Genesis 3:16 ESV
  ¹⁶ To the woman he said, “I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children. Your desire shall be contrary to your husband, but he shall rule over you.”When Paul asks the wives to submit to their husbands in Ephesians 5, it is not because husbands have no room for submitting to their wives. But it is given because the curse of the fall of man is that a wife’s desires are set contrary to submission, especially to her husband. Therefore, when a Christian wife submits, it is glory. The submission of a Christian wife to her husband is a sign of redemption and the restoration of this world from the curse of sin.
  True femininity is a glory of redemption, a sign of the restoration of all things.
  And in this passage, the Redeemer meets a woman and he chooses to redeem her after an amazing exchange between them.

Exegesis

Matthew 15:21 ESV
²¹ And Jesus went away from there and withdrew to the district of Tyre and Sidon.

• Jesus now withdraws from Galilee and his long ministry in that Jewish region. Many possibilities are suggested here including the rising opposition of the Pharisees & Scribes, the crowds’ desire to make him King by force, the danger of Herod or even that Jesus needs to rest a while from his constant ministry work.
  Mark 7:24 ESV
  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.This parallel in Mark seems to suggest that Jesus wanted to go there in hiding in order to avoid a large crowd.
  Matthew 15:22 ESV
  ²² 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.”
• In walks the Canaanite woman. The woman I admire this day was a Canaanite woman. Do you know what that means? When I spoke much about this woman in the introduction, I wonder what kind of a picture you would have drawn of her.
  This was a Canaanite woman, an idol worshipper, a pagan, not an Israelite, one who was from a different region than the land of Canaan.
  This is also a stunning contrast in this passage where on one end we have the Pharisees and scribes, devout and learned in the Scriptures, and on the other end a woman who up until this point had probably never turned to the Living God.
  She was not the woman of Proverbs 31, or one wise in the ways of the Lord. But she was able to display a faith that would make the Lord heed her prayer.
  Women, you are not to imitate the Canaanite woman’s ignorance of Scripture or anything of her past, but to imitate her in what she does here before the Lamb of God.
• It was from that region, from Tyre and Sidon that this woman had come, and she was crying. This ought to immediately invoke in all of us the picture of another woman who centuries before, came from this same land and was in great dismay.
  1 Kings 17:8–12 ESV
  ⁸ Then the word of the Lord came to him,  ⁹ “Arise, go to Zarephath, which belongs to Sidon, and dwell there. Behold, I have commanded a widow there to feed you.”  ¹⁰ So he arose and went to Zarephath. And when he came to the gate of the city, behold, a widow was there gathering sticks. And he called to her and said, “Bring me a little water in a vessel, that I may drink.”  ¹¹ And as she was going to bring it, he called to her and said, “Bring me a morsel of bread in your hand.”  ¹² And she said, “As the Lord your God lives, I have nothing baked, only a handful of flour in a jar and a little oil in a jug. And now I am gathering a couple of sticks that I may go in and prepare it for myself and my son, that we may eat it and die.”
• Elijah was sent away from Israel to Sidon because God had judged the Israelites for their idolatry who were gone astray led by their king and queen, Ahab and Jezebel. And God withheld the rain from the land and famine was about.
• Christ, the Sovereign, had once sent Elijah to a widow who would feed him, a widow in desperate need. Christ, the Sovereign, now enters that region himself to meet a woman who was desperate herself.
  “As the Lord your God lives, I have nothing baked, only a handful of flour in a jar and a little oil in a jug. And now I am gathering a couple of sticks that I may go in and prepare it for myself and my son, that we may eat it and die.”
  Her desperation is made clear. This is the last meal of her family, both she and her son.
  Matthew 15:22 ESV
  ²² 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.”
• What does a Canaanite woman know of the mercy of David’s God? What does she know about the Son of David? What does she know of demons? What does she know of the truth?
  She was a Syrophoenician by birth according to Mark 7:28, which meant that she was a worshipper of many of the pagan deities in the region, one of whom was a pagan God of healing whose temple would have been no more than 3 miles from where she met Jesus.
  No, what is stunning is not all that she didn’t know but how she acted with the very little that she did. She would have undoubtedly picked up on the use of the phrase ‘Son of David’ and had some understanding of what that meant by now since many in Israel were stirred up to make Jesus King by force.
  She turns away from her pagan deities and runs for the Jewish man dressed in ordinary garments walking with ordinary men and women.
  Oh, but is this not the picture of salvation where we left the idols of this world and ran for the slopes of Golgotha? We thought we did it all, our choice and decision and yet we know that we can use none of it to our boast.
  Ephesians 2:8–9 ESV
  ⁸ For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God,  ⁹ not a result of works, so that no one may boast.It was not our choice or our decision but the gift of faith. This is the irresistible grace of God at work in the heart of this woman. The Spirit of God is drawing her out.
• O Lord – She calls him Lord. Her immediate and quick posture is one of meekness, of submission to the authority of Christ.
  What delight it would have been for the Lord to hear himself being called with such reverence when day after day he has suffered the ignorance and stubbornness of the Pharisees and Scribes.
  Before she made her plea, she bowed before his Lordship and Davidic heritage.
  1 Kings 17:10–11 ESV
  ¹⁰ So he arose and went to Zarephath. And when he came to the gate of the city, behold, a widow was there gathering sticks. And he called to her and said, “Bring me a little water in a vessel, that I may drink.”  ¹¹ And as she was going to bring it, he called to her and said, “Bring me a morsel of bread in your hand.”
  •  How does a woman on her last meal turn to bring water for a stranger? In her meek and humble disposition, she was willing to serve.
    I wonder what would have happened if she said, “You’re a grown man. Go fetch some for yourself.”
• my daughter is severely oppressed by a demon. – In the land of idols, demons had taken hold of her daughter. No matter where she took her, no god of stone could heal her. She had fallen into the trap of the cruelty of the enemy and had no escape. Her world was coming down on her.
  The Scripture tells us nothing of her husband or other family members. But she was desperate for her daughter and for her sake she found the courage to reject the traditions of her family in search of redemption.
• Have mercy on me – The word ‘mercy’ much like ‘grace’ doesn’t mean anything if one deserved them. By definition, mercy and grace are offered to the undeserving.
  Mercy was not a thing for her to claim. Even the very cry for mercy is a surrendering of our plans and the exalted view of ourselves.
  To ask for mercy is to give yourself to the one who can give it.
  1 Kings 17:12 ESV
  ¹² And she said, “As the Lord your God lives, I have nothing baked, only a handful of flour in a jar and a little oil in a jug. And now I am gathering a couple of sticks that I may go in and prepare it for myself and my son, that we may eat it and die.”
• Even the response of the widow to Elijah was one invoking Elijah’s mercy. I would give you what I have, but I have just enough for me and my son, and this is our last meal.
  Matthew 15:23 ESV
  ²³ 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 did not respond or acknowledge her. Christians find this a difficult text to read for it appears to them that the Lord was insensitive to the cries of a desperate mother.
  No beloved, Jesus may not have acknowledged her but for certain, she was not ignored. The God of Elijah who sent him to the widow is this same Christ who now did not answer a word to this woman. He who was Philip sitting under the tree knew the peril of this one.
  But why did he say nothing?
  1 Kings 17:13 ESV
  ¹³ And Elijah said to her, “Do not fear; go and do as you have said. But first, make me a little cake of it and bring it to me, and afterwards make something for yourself and your son.
  • How could you ask a struggling widow to risk the last meal of her son’s, of her own, to feed yourself, Elijah?
    No, it was not cruelty or selfishness, but generosity and love that made Elijah say this. Like a sculptor who deals roughly with a piece of wood to carve it into a sculpture of beauty, so does our faith require carving.
    Psalm 66:10 ESV
    ¹⁰ For you, O God, have tested us; you have tried us as silver is tried.
    Proverbs 17:3 ESV
    ³ The crucible is for silver, and the furnace is for gold, and the Lord tests hearts.It is God who wields the tools that shape our faith. Does the clay ever ask the Potter why have you shaped me this way?
    It is not cruelty that Jesus was silent, but the very mercy that this woman was crying out for. In that sense, the moment she cried out for mercy, Jesus had already issued it through his silence. He knew where she was from and what she needed and he knew even more of what she needed than she did. That, my beloved, is Sovereignty.
    Jesus’ silence here is the glory of Sovereignty.
• This whole affair had the disciples quite perplexed and confused. They wanted to send her away if Jesus was not going to answer her pleas.
  Maybe they hoped that Jesus would just grant her mercy and let her go, or otherwise send her away but I suppose they knew that nothing would keep this woman away apart from giving her what she desperately needed.
  Jesus’ silence baffled his own disciples.
• The woman, on the other hand, was relentless. Jesus’ silence did not surprise her for she did not regard herself as worthy of a hearing. She needed mercy and had no right to be heard.
  When he did not acknowledge her, she pursued the whole company, coming after the disciples and pleading with them for Jesus’ mercy.
  Her relentless pleas led the disciples to beg Jesus to do something.
  Matthew 15:24 ESV
  ²⁴ He answered, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”
• His silence now borderlines rejection. Jesus explains the truth of what the Son of David was sent to do. It was not the time for him to cast his net upon the whole world. It was to the lost sheep of Israel that he was sent, and that is where his task lay.
  He gave the woman more information on her unworthiness to ask him for anything. A pagan idol worshipper now come before the God of Israel who is holy, and Israel his people who were called to be holy.
• Yet again, the greater clarity of her unworthiness was not a means to break her faith but to sharpen it. Like a pencil that we sharpen and the sharpest it gets is the nearest to its breaking point.
  Christ was still chipping away at her heart and shaping her mind.
• This statement would have bewildered the Apostle who knew for certain that he healed the Centurion’s servant in Matthew 8 and his discourse with the Samaritan woman at the well.
  They probably wondered why Jesus would now use this as an excuse. But they would be wrong, we would be wrong in thinking that this is even an excuse. It was not. It was a test, a test of faith, a test that would strengthen her faith.
  For the Lord who knows the heart of all his people knows what they need for strengthening.
  Psalm 19:14 ESV
  ¹⁴ Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.
  1 Samuel 16:7 ESV
  ⁷ But the Lord said to Samuel, “Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him. For the Lord sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.”
  1 Corinthians 10:13 ESV
  ¹³ No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation, he will also provide a way of escape, so that you may be able to endure it.This test was not beyond the ability of this woman’s faith that the Spirit of God had wrought in her.
  1 Kings 17:14 ESV
  ¹⁴ For thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, ‘The jar of flour shall not be spent, and the jug of oil shall not be empty, until the day that the Lord sends rain upon the earth.’ ”
• If the woman before Jesus would be strengthened by such a test, the widow before Elijah needed encouragement.
  The God who encourages us is also able to test us.
• But even the widow had to follow through and hold fast to her faith. If encouragement exercised her faith, the test of Christ’s words exercised the faith of the woman who came to him.Matthew 15:25 ESV
  ²⁵ But she came and knelt before him, saying, “Lord, help me.”
• If relentlessness put of flesh and blood, it would be this woman. She was not going to be turned down, but neither was she going to exalt herself in her persistence.
  Somehow, when we escalate things they move from meekness to anger, from submission to demanding, from gentleness to forcefulness, from humility to pride.
  This happens when our eyes are not set on the truth. This woman’s eyes were set on the reality of her unworthiness, Christ’s worthiness and that apart from mercy nothing would happen.
  So, she did not get angry with Christ. She escalated the issue without changing her mind about her situation or by forcing Christ’s hands through ungodly means. She was constrained by the truth. She understood herself well enough.
• Her escalation was to increase her submission and highlight her poverty.
  She came to the one who dismissed her. Her pride did not walk her away but her humility brought her nearer.
  and knelt before him. – The word for knelt here is to prostrate oneself, usually as a sign of worship. She laid herself low before him and cried,
  Lord, help me. – His Lordship was ever before her eyes and in greater submission, she asked to be helped. His mercy was her only hope and she would submit to his Lordship.
  Matthew 15:26 ESV
  ²⁶ And he answered, “It is not right to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.”
• The Bible uses two words for ‘dogs’, one for the scavenger and the other for those domestic pets that were considered part of the family.
  Jesus does not use the harsh word for a dog here but the domestic one. He did not intend for her to be offended but this way of phrasing it wouldn’t have been strange to the woman.
  The Jews often called the Gentiles dogs to refer to those not privileged as sons to the household of God. They were at best dogs.
• The woman knew that the Jews were children by covenant and she was an outsider, a dog.
  Jesus doubles down on his earlier statement that she is not one of the children of Israel.
  Matthew 15:27 ESV
  ²⁷ She said, “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.”
• But the woman doubles down on her plea by doubling down on her surrender to the Lordship of Christ having understood her poor estate.
  She desired the mercy that even dogs have in the home.
• Watch how a woman who correctly identifies her plight as an outsider did not find the solution to breaking out of the stereotype.
  There are stereotypes that need breaking, traditions of men that need to fall like the walls of Jericho, but much of the world is taking down the Scriptural wonder of a woman with it.
  A woman does not need to have all the freedoms of a man in order to be full. She needs to have all the freedoms of a woman in order to be full, and that means that she must submit to what she is not called for or created for.
  This woman found her peace in submitting to Christ’s authority, to biblical authority.
  Matthew 15:28 ESV
  ²⁸ Then Jesus answered her, “O woman, great is your faith! Be it done for you as you desire.” And her daughter was healed instantly.1 Kings 17:15–16 ESV
  ¹⁵ And she went and did as Elijah said. And she and he and her household ate for many days.  ¹⁶ The jar of flour was not spent, neither did the jug of oil become empty, according to the word of the Lord that he spoke by Elijah.