Great Faith
Published by Stanley Pouw in 2013 · 6 October 2013
Matthew 15:21-28, “Then Jesus went out from there and departed to the region of Tyre and Sidon. 22 And behold, a woman of Canaan came from that region and cried out to Him, saying, “Have mercy on me, O Lord, Son of David! My daughter is severely demon-possessed.” 23 But He answered her not a word. And His disciples came and urged Him, saying, “Send her away, for she cries out after us.” 24 But He answered and said, “I was not sent except to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” 25 Then she came and worshiped Him, saying, “Lord, help me!” 26 But He answered and said, “It is not good to take the children’s bread and throw it to the little dogs.” 27 And she said, “Yes, Lord, yet even the little dogs eat the crumbs which fall from their masters’ table.” 28 Then Jesus answered and said to her, “O woman, great is your faith! Let it be to you as you desire.” And her daughter was healed from that very hour.”
Jesus says of this woman, "You have great faith." The Bible speaks of little faith, weak faith, and also of strong faith, abiding faith and obedient faith. But what is the nature of great faith? This isn't the first time our Lord has said this. In Matthew 8, a centurion came to Him and wanted Jesus to perform a miracle on behalf of his servant, who was paralyzed. Jesus said to him, "I have not found so great faith in Israel." And both were Gentiles.
Verse 21, "Then Jesus went out from there," that is, from Galilee where He had been ministering for a long time, “and departed to the region of Tyre and Sidon.” The pressure was mounting, His ministry was so far-reaching, everyone knew about it. And hostility was rising from the people who wanted to force Him to be a king and the Pharisees wanted to kill Him.
So from the frenzy of Galilee, He went to the north, the region of Tyre and Sidon. He went beyond the political and religious jurisdiction of the leaders of Israel. The journey was perhaps 50 miles through rough mountain passage roads. It was a great change in climate, from the hot area of the Sea of Galilee, to the high cool mountains of southern Lebanon.
So Jesus left Palestine, the land of Israel, for a brief time to go into the border region of Phoenicia. For Jesus, this was a deliberate withdrawal. Some people find it contradictory that He actually went into a Gentile land because of what it says in verse 24, "I am not sent but to the lost sheep of the house of Israel." We'll see what verse 24 means as we move through the text, but it is in no way violated the truth of that verse.
Mark 7:24 says, "He went away to the region of Tyre. When He had entered a house, He wanted no one to know of it." So He did not specifically go there to minister. But Jesus knew there would be some ministry there. The people of Phoenicia, that area now known as Lebanon, had already heard much about His ministry.
As far back as Matthew 4, when Jesus was beginning His ministry in Galilee, verse 24 says that people were coming out of that area north of the border of Palestine and were going down to Galilee, because they had heard of Jesus. And they were bringing multitudes with them, and He healed their diseases and cast out their demons.
Mark 3:8, which also records an earlier time, says, "From the vicinity of Tyre and Sidon, a great multitude heard of all that Jesus was doing and came to Him." Note that they must have had receptive hearts. These were hearts that were not burdened by the legalism of Judaism, not bound by the chains of tradition. They were less intellectually proud and less religiously proud.
Look at Matthew 11:21, Jesus says, "Woe unto you, Korazin and Bethsaida, for if the mighty works which were done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes." So Jesus says that the people of Phoenicia were quite receptive and that is not true among the Jews.
So although He is not fully opening the ministry to the Gentiles, or canceling out the priority of Israel, He is extending Himself to open hearts. Jesus knew that when He got there, He would meet this woman, because He knew everything. And before He left, according to Mark 7:31, He did minister to many people in that area, so He responded to other open hearts.
There is symbolism in this; He is abandoning traditional religion for true faith. He is abandoning religious pride for humility. He is abandoning the one who seeks nothing for the one who seeks with an open heart. He is always available to that person. His mission has always been what He said in Matthew 28, "Go into all the world and make disciples of all nations."
Look at verse 22, "Behold, a woman of Canaan came from that region and cried out to Him." This person, according to the Jews, cannot enter into the blessing of God. First, it's a woman, and secondly, she's a Canaanite. They were the original occupants of the Promised Land, and God said to Israel, "This is now your land, the land of our covenant, and when you enter that land, totally eliminate the Canaanites.”
Mark calls her a Syro-Phoenician, that is, from the area of Syria and Phoenicia, or Syria and Lebanon. This is the woman who comes to Jesus, and she is a picture of genuine, saving faith. She is outside the covenant, a sinner from a people of sinners, she has no worthiness to ask anything of our Lord, and she is the perfect example of a sinner who comes without right or privilege to embrace Jesus Christ by faith alone.
We can conclude that she is totally dissatisfied with her idols. If she has been worshiping Astarte alone or in concert with other gods, they have not been able to solve her problem. Her needs are not met, and so she comes to Jesus Christ believing in her heart that He can meet her need. Jesus says of her in verse 28, "You have great faith."
This is an important note: great faith is a relative term. To her, it was great faith because her knowledge was so limited. She was a pagan outside the covenant, outside the Word of God, and she had been in area where the Lord Jesus had not been doing His mighty deeds. So based on having little information and almost no content, her faith is great.
On the other hand, when the Lord says to the disciples, "Oh you of little faith," it is only little in a relative sense; relative to all they knew and to all they had been exposed to. But in her case, this is great faith, that is the key to the whole passage. If you don't understand that the faith of the woman is the issue, you can't understand what goes on.
There are five qualities that mark great faith. The first one is that great faith is properly directed. She put her faith in the right person. She was disillusioned with the idols, the no-gods, all the things of this world, like money, status and worldly knowledge. She now puts her faith in Jesus. Many have great faith, but in the wrong things!
Secondly, faith is repentant. We see that in verse 22, "A woman of Canaan came from that region and cried out to Him, saying, 'Have mercy on me.'" What does that mean? What does mercy say? Mercy says, "I'm here in spite of the fact that I don't deserve anything."
The term 'mercy' is a biblical term. In the Old Testament as well as the New Testament, the word eleeo, is used 500 times! It describes man's relation to God that man comes to God only to seek mercy. David cries out to God in Psalm 51, "Have mercy on me, O Lord, according to Your loving kindness, according to Your tender mercies." This is the opposite of the spiritual pride of the Pharisees and scribes.
Genuine saving faith really understands the blessing of Christ. There is repentance, a sense of unworthiness and penitence. You recognize that you are asking a favor that you do not deserve. Great faith has repentance; repentance isn't something you add to faith. Faith and repentance, like Siamese twins, are vitally joined together. Faith and repentance are like two spokes in the same wheel.
Thirdly, her faith was also reverent. Listen to what she says, "Have mercy on me, O Lord, Son of David!" She gives Him such a reverent title, and really two titles. The first is Lord, sovereign deity, and second Son of David, promised Messiah and Savior. She knows Jesus has supernatural power.
The fact that she seeks and believes that Jesus can free her daughter from a demon vexation indicates that she believes that Jesus has power over the supernatural kingdom of Satan and demons. She understands that the word 'Lord' has some sense of deity, of the supernatural, of sovereignty over darkness and demons.
Then she calls Him, "Son of David." That is a Messianic title, the right to be a king, and there is sovereignty in that as well. David was a king, and this Lord who was his son was also of royal lineage. She sees in that Messianic name the royal, sovereign Christ. It certainly was of great contrast to the irreverent Jews who called Him a drunk, a friend of sinners and demon-possessed.
People in our day are very irreverent toward Christ. They would use His name profanely, as a curse word, an epithet to express their anger or bitterness. Even in the church, I fear that we sometimes have become irreverent. Great faith has great reverence, a sense of respect and awe.
She says, "My daughter is badly demonized." This ought to be a warning that even a little child in a pagan society is susceptible to being demonized. It is nice to see a mother, outside the covenant, who didn't know God, who loved her baby. We don't always see that kind of love in our society. God has built in, even to pagans, that a woman should love her child. We see less and less of that today.
Fourthly, great faith is persistent. Notice beginning in verse 23, Jesus puts up a series of barriers for this woman. Some people come to Christ and have to struggle through their own doubt, some struggle through their inabilities, but this woman, in order to get to Christ, has to struggle through the barriers that Jesus puts up Himself.
In verse 23, she says, "'Have mercy on me, O Lord, Son of David! My daughter is severely demon-possessed.' But He answered her not a word." He didn't say a word. You say, "That isn't like Christ. I mean, why does He remain silent?" Did He care? Sure. Did He have compassion? Of course, but what was He doing? Why didn't He say anything?
Jesus wanted to test, to strengthen and to increase this woman's faith to reach its full potential, so He puts up barriers through which she must persist to show the reality of true faith. That's why this account is in the text, to contrast it with the shallowness of the prior ones we have seen. So Jesus puts up the barriers through which only genuine faith will persist.
So Jesus doesn't say anything. His disciples are not nearly so in control, verse 23 continues, "His disciples came and urged Him, saying, 'Send her away, for she cries out after us.'" They're saying send her away please! It is no big thing to just heal and send her away.
Instead, Jesus says this to her, and of course they heard this in verse 24, "I was not sent except to the lost sheep of the house of Israel." Wow, it's saying, "Lady, you're not a Jew. Sorry." Why would He say that? He had healed the centurion's servant, given grace to a Samaritan. And the multitudes who had come out of Tyre and Sidon in Matthew 4 had been healed, and the demons had been cast out of them.
Jesus is saying first of all that the plan is still the same. He would go back into Israel, and preach to them and call them to believe and come to His Kingdom. Even when He ascended into Heaven, Peter stood up in Acts 3 and says, "You have killed the Prince of Life," and at the end of the sermon, he says, "But you're still the sons of the covenant." In other words, God is still calling out to them.
Mark 7:27 adds in his account that Jesus said, "Let the children first be filled." In other words, "I'm going to feed Israel first." We always knew that He would go to the world, and Israel was to be the channel, and already many Gentiles had responded, but Jesus wanted them to know that that was still God’s plan, to go through Israel.
Fifthly, great faith is humble. Verse 25, "Then she came and worshiped Him." This is a humble lady! She's not mad, she's worshiping. She says, "Lord help me." By the way, it says that she worshiped, and the word is proskuneo, which means she bowed down, and put her head in the dirt in worship.
Worship is always accepted by the Lord. Whenever Jesus was worshiped, He accepted it because He deserved it; He was God. This is the truly seeking heart, the beatitude attitude, where you come begging in your spirit, meekly, hungering and thirsting after righteousness, and even the Lord Himself cannot put sufficient barriers to hold you back.
Then the Lord says, "It's not right to take the children's bread and throw it to the little dogs." At first He's silent, and now, He calls her a dog! It's another barrier. You're thinking, "Is the Lord trying to convert this woman or not?" But He gives her a little picture.
There are two words in the Greek for 'dogs,' and one is the mangy, vicious kind of dog that runs in packs and prowled around the garbage. The other is the word for little pet dog, and that's the word Jesus uses. So it is not a vicious statement; what He's saying is that while you're eating dinner, you don't take the kids' food and give it to the begging pet dog at their feet.
And she said, "Yes, Lord." Now, she's not just emotional, but she's sharp, "Yet even the little dogs eat the crumbs which fall from their masters' table." She picks up on His analogy and takes it a step further; she's persistent. If Jesus was going to make being a Jew an issue, she would go through that. That couldn't stop her either.
That was a true statement. Through the time that Jesus was feeding the children of Israel, crumbs were dropping to the Gentiles, and we see it all through the gospel account. Finally, of course, the time will come when the church is born and Gentiles are embraced in a marvelous way. What a persistent lady.
Watch our Lord's response in verse 28. "Then Jesus answered and said to her, 'O woman, great is your faith! Let it be to you as you desire.' And her daughter was healed from that very hour." That was a saving day for that lady, because she had great faith. That's what great faith does. How is your faith? Let's pray that our faith is like hers.