David: [upbeat music] Hey, everyone. Welcome to a special episode of the Spoken Gospel podcast. This is special because we are gonna do something a little different, but something we've done before, and we wanna reintroduce it and get your thoughts on what you think of it.
We wanna dive into some smaller passages of scripture and explain what they're all about, how they all point to Jesus, and show how we apply our gospel-centered hermeneutic and the story of the Bible way of reading scripture to specific passages of God's Word, um, so that you can kind of experience that with us. And today, what we're gonna do is we're going to look at Mark 7, verses 24 to 30, and this is the story of Jesus and the Syrophoenician woman, where it seems like Jesus calls this woman a dog. And it's led a lot of people to be kind of confused, maybe even offended, as they've read this passage.
But as we do the work of understanding it in the context of Mark's gospel and of the story of the whole Bible, especially how it maps on beat for beat with a story from Elijah's ministry, we see a beautiful picture of who Jesus' ministry was for, the outcasts, the foreigners, the nations, and who his ministry challenged, uh, the established religious authority, those who found their confidence in their ethnic identity. And Jesus dialogues with all of this and offers some challenges to us, too. So what we're gonna do in today's episode, and for the next few episodes, is look into this passage and a few others in Mark, using sermons to do so.
I've been preaching through Mark with a teaching team at my local church, and I'd like to share some of my sermons with you, uh, as a way for you to see how this gospel-centered hermeneutic that we do here on the podcast applies on a normal Sunday morning when you open a specific passage of scripture. So I hope you enjoy this sermon on the Syrophoenician woman in Mark 7. Let us know what you think of this new format, and if you wanna see more of it.
Enjoy the sermon, and we will see you next time.
Uh, we drew straws about who would have to preach about Jesus calling someone a dog, and I lost. [audience laughing] Um, so here's my attempt.
I'm just kidding. This is... We're gonna dispel that idea that Jesus is calling someone a dog today, so don't worry about that.
But I'm very excited and a bit trepidatious to bring this word to you today, so let's start in prayer. Father, we confess that what we know of you will only ever be a fraction of who you are. Jesus, open our minds to see you and understand the scriptures.
Holy Spirit, move our hearts from familiar to fascinated until they are ablaze with your unfailing love. In Jesus' name, amen.
Crowd: Amen.
David: So if you look at the context of where we're at today, it's gonna provide us a ton of help in trying to interpret these two stories that we just read. So if you remember, a few weeks ago, I preached on the feeding of the five thousand and the feeding of the four thousand, and how they formed one of those, uh, things that Hayden so affectionately calls a Mark sandwich. And we talked about the feeding of the five thousand were for the Jews, and the feeding of the four thousand were for the Gentiles.
And then Jesus starts making his switch from a Jewish audience into a Gentile audience, from the nation of Israel to the nations of those who have not known Yahweh. And as he does this, uh, Toby showed us how he enters into conversation with the Pharisees, um, in the, in the, in the passage just before this one, all about what defiles a person, what makes them clean or unclean, acceptable or unacceptable, what puts someone in right relationship with God. And the Pharisees, as Toby explained last week, as a representative of the Judaism of their day, they believed that what was external was determinative for someone's standing before God, and they often manifested that belief in obeying Torah practices and things such as, like, eating kosher.
But then those Torah practices expanded even farther to the traditions of men, things to further draw the boundary lines between those who were markedly Jewish and those who were clearly not. And so they would do things like ceremonial washing of hands, and they, they would go into a Gentile market and buy food, and then they'd wash their whole bodies to show this distinction between the unclean Gentile nations and the clean, chosen Jewish people. And what had happened that Jesus points out is they had fallen into a trap that Israel, throughout the pages of the Old Testament, fell into again and again.
They believed that their standing with God hinged on the fact simply that they were Israelites. God chose them. He gave them the law.
They were his people, and as long as they remained distinctly Jewish, then their standing was secured. For a Pharisee that Jesus was talking to, what defiles a person? Simply this: not being a Jew.
And this idea, you can kind of see how the Pharisees and the Jewish people in Jesus' day got there because it's not entirely unfounded, but it is deeply misguided and regularly critiqued by Jesus and the prophets. You think about the story of the Bible. In the beginning of the world, in creation, God created the world to be this clean, undefiled, beautiful place where he and his people could live together, and they would be fruitful and multiply, and they would cover the dark, defiled, unreached earth until the whole world was full of the beauty of God living through his people on earth.
And he chose to do this-
David: ... after Adam and Eve failed to do it and brought defilement into the world, God chose to do this through a chosen family, the family of Abraham. And when God chose Abraham, He told them that all the nations, all the Gentiles of the world, would be blessed through this one family, through this chosen family, and anyone who blesses them would be blessed, and anybody who curses them would be cursed. It's through Israel that the world would be recreated, made new, and God would live in it as He intended.
But what happens when this engine for renewal itself gets defiled? What happens when Israel, who is supposed to clean up the world, themselves become unclean? 'Cause that's what Jesus pointed out in the me- the passage that Toby unpacked last week, that, yeah, they're doing all these markers of Jewish identity, saying like, "No, no, no, we're good.
We're totally, squarely in the people of God. We're fenced off from the unclean, defiled nations of the world. We're good here." And Jesus [chuckles] says, "Look at your heart.
Inside, you're defiled. Inside, everything is unclean and sinful and broken, and I wanna heal that." And then He tells a parable to the people there. He tells a parable, uh, in seven, fourteen: "And He called them together again and said, 'Hear me, all of you, and understand.
There is nothing outside a person that i- that by going into him can defile him.'" So, like, what you eat cannot go in and defile you. "'But the things that come out of a person are that which defile him.'" So you have this little one-sentence parable, Jesus calls it a parable, one-sentence parable about food and how that includes you in the Kingdom of God or not. And then what happens when they hear this parable?
Uh, [chuckles] let's see here. They, the, His disciples come, and they ask Him to explain the parable to them. And then Jesus says in verse eighteen, "Are you also without understanding?" And then He explains it to them.
So, so see the pattern here. God is... Jesus is talking to them about what defiles a person, what makes one standing right with Him in His kingdom, and He tells the Jews a parable to answer the question, and they do not understand it, and so Jesus tries to get them to understand it by explaining it a little bit more, and they still don't quite get it.
And so right after this, we get our passage today, and it says that, "From there, He arose and went away." This is, it, it kinda gets hidden a little bit in the English. This is stronger language than Mark normally uses to talk about the journeys of Jesus. There is this turning away and this intentional departure from the Jewish territory of His day, and now He's gonna go deeper into the nations, deeper into Gentile territory than He's ever gone before.
And He's gonna do later this really weird, circuitous, kind of horseshoe movement, skirting Jewish territory, only to go deeper into Gentile territory. You see what He's doing here? He's gonna show physically, incarnationally, parabolically, through what He's gonna do, He's going to show in these two stories what He's trying to teach the Jews about how to be included in His kingdom, and it's not about being Jewish, but about believing in the Jewish Messiah.
It's all about who Jesus is, not who they are, and so that is the story that we run into here. "And He went from there," this is verse twenty-four, "He rose and went away to the region of Tyre and Sidon." Jesus arrives in this place, Tyre and Sidon, and He tries to hide. He goes into a house and tries to remain hidden, but it's impossible for Him, and everybody finds out who He is.
And that, that... You gotta ask the question: Why is His fame so big in this area right now? Uh, the only time in Mark so far that He's come near this region and done some pretty ama- amazing things, um, has been, like, maybe the Gerasene demoniac, some other smaller miracles.
He hasn't done a ton in this area yet, um, but His fame has really spread, and I wonder if it's because this is not the first time a Jewish healer has come to this region in the history of their country. In fact, this is the exact same area where the prophet Elijah came when Israel was in a very similar situation that Jesus is rebuking in His actions here. Back in First Kings, you can read about this, and we'll, we'll talk through the story a little bit, Israel had become defiled.
They were worshiping idols. They were inwardly unclean, but they were leaning on their Jewishness in order to excuse all their evil. They were, they were saying, "Hey, we're the people of God.
We can do whatever we want," and they were using that to excuse all kinds of evil. And so through Elijah, God prophesied and brought a drought on the land of Israel, and He did so as a picture of the goodness of God and the Word of God that was also experiencing a drought in the land of Israel. And He sent His Jewish chosen prophet, miracle worker, Elijah, and He sent him out of the region of Israel, just like Jesus just did, and to the exact same place that Jesus is now in Mark seven.
And it's there that Elijah meets, of all people, a Syrophoenician woman, like Jesus meets in Mark seven. She's from this land of Tyre and Sidon, and back then, the, the, the area was known as Zarephath, but it's the exact same area, and some translations will even call this a Syrophoenician woman. And, and Elijah's going to this Syrophoenician woman.
He's going to Tyre and Sidon-... as a judgment against Israel, because they're not listening to his words, they're not heeding his warnings, and so he's gonna go out to the nations for a couple reasons. One, to show them by contrast that out here in the nations, there are people who will believe in his word and accept the message of God. But then also, because what happens if the cleaning agent of the world, Israel, becomes defiled and stops the mission to the Gentiles?
What happens? Well, the nations will die. They'll dry up, they'll perish, and so God sends his chosen messenger into the nations in order to save lives.
That's exactly what happened. Elijah is met by this Syrophoenician woman, and she has, uh, a jar and a jug, and inside the jar is just a, a t- tiny little bit of flour. She's got crumbs of flour left over, and then in a jug, she's got a tiny little bit of oil.
And she says, "All I have is enough to make one little cake of bread, and I'm gathering sticks right now to bake it. I'm gonna feed my son and I. That's gonna be our last meal, and then we're gonna die, because we're starving to death in the drought." And Elijah says, "Feed me the bread first..." [chuckles] Are you guys fo- are you picking it up already?
Okay, I heard a laugh. I was like, "You guys are seeing it." Okay. "Feed me the bread first, and then the jug and jar of oil and flour will never run out.
The little crumbs left over will feed you for eternity, because you have trusted in God's chosen servant and fed him first. Now, even the crumbs will feed you and your family forever." And that's exactly what happens. She has this, like, miracle jar and jug that until the drought ends, it's never lacking in flour and oil.
Which is interesting that right after this story, Jesus then does the feeding of the 4,000, right? He just exacerbates that miracle again. He multiplies food.
I just think that's really cool. And so now Jesus, in Mark 7, reenacts this story, uh, and he does so with this Syrophoenician woman. And so this Syrophoenician woman, she comes to Jesus, and she falls down at his feet and begs him for a miracle.
The last time in Mark's gospel that this happened, uh, where somebody fell down at Jesus's feet and begged him for a miracle, was the leader of the synagogue, and that was a Jew of Jews, like, the, the, the clean of clean [chuckles], and he begs Jesus for a miracle and gets it. Well, now you have the uncleanness of the uncleanness, ex... Pardon my bad English there, you know, falling down at Jesus's feet, positioning themself in the same way that the Jews got healed.
And now, what's Jesus gonna do with this situation? Because not only is she unclean from a Jewish perspective, uh, it even lists, like... It's like, oh, he goes to Tyre and Sidon, and then meets somebody.
Well, of course she's foreign. But then he says, "She's a Gentile. She was a fire- a Syrophoenician by birth." It just leans into her ethnicity, where she's from, and what the Jews would be thinking of in that moment, that this person would not be welcomed into the family of God.
And but beyond that, her daughter has an unclean spirit living inside her. So externally, from a Jewish perspective, this woman is unclean, and then the person that she's wanting healed, her daughter, is internally unclean, because she has an unclean spirit inside of her. And so if you're a Jew reading Mark, and you're trying to understand what Jesus was saying when he was rebuking the Pharisees about what makes a person unclean, you kind of feel like this situation has checkmated Jesus.
You're like: Well, what are you gonna do, Jesus? She's, she's unclean inside and out. How are you gonna solve the problem?
And the way Jesus solves it is so strange to me [chuckles] until I started to walk through it and try to make sense of it, so go on that journey with me. Because Jesus does not react in the same way he has so many times before with other healings and people begging for him, even in Gentile territory. I preached, like, a few months ago on the, the Gerasene demoniac.
He was a Gentile who had an unclean spirit, lots of unclean spirits, and they... He came and fell down before Jesus, and Jesus didn't give him this, like, parable, this teaching. He just [snaps finger] healed him.
Well, why- now it's different. Jesus is gonna do something different. How does he handle it?
Surprisingly, Jesus doesn't just heal this woman's, uh, daughter. Instead, he poses her a riddle in the form of a parable. And so if you see the context, right before, Jesus gave a parabolic riddle to his disciples about food and inclusion, and they didn't get it, and now he's gonna do the same thing with a Gentile woman.
He's gonna give her a parabolic riddle about food and Gentile and Jewish inclusion, but something different's gonna happen. So he gives her this parable, this riddle. Jesus said in chapter 7, verse 27: "Let the children be fed first, for it is not right to take the children's bread and throw it to the dogs." There's a lot to unpack here, but first, before we get into the meat of the riddle, let's ask the question: Why is Jesus speaking in a parable at all?
Why is this his course of action, instead of just healing her right away? Well, Mark has already told us many, many times throughout his gospel that Jesus speaks to those outside his group of disciples in parables, in riddles, for a distinct purpose. Just one example of this is Mark 4:12: "I speak in parables that they might indeed, uh, or that, that they may indeed see, but not perceive, and may indeed hear, but not understand, lest they should turn and be forgiven." So people have been listening to Jesus' parables in Jewish territory, and they've not understood them.
The more they hear Jesus' parables in Jewish territory, the harder their hearts get, the deafer their ears get, the less they understand. Well, now, for the first time, Jesus is gonna tell a parable to a Gentile-... and you've got this outcasted, unclean woman. What chance does she have to understand this parable?
What chance does she have to not be deaf like everyone else? Because after all, it's the wisest Jewish scholars who haven't understood Jesus' parables. It's the mass crowds of devout Jews who haven't understood his parables.
It's Jesus' own disciples who haven't understood his parables, and yet surprisingly, for the first time in Mark's gospel, someone's gonna understand and rightly apply and respond to a parable of Jesus, and it's an unwanted, unaccepted, outcasted Syrophoenician woman. Amen. This is exciting stuff!
[chuckles] Jesus is pulling in people from the outside because he loves the world so much, and he is going to give this woman a parable in order to show his heart for her and her, her nation. So now let's look at the parable. "Let the children be fed first." So the children here are a reference to God's chosen people of God, the, the Jews.
They are God's children. They're called that throughout the Old Testament. Um, and as in the covenant with Abraham, God blessed him first so that they could be a blessing.
So let the children eat first. I'm gonna feed Abraham first. I'm gonna, I'm gonna feed Elijah first, and through this nation, I'm going to bless the world.
It's through the people of Israel that the nations will be blessed. So, so we have to make sure we hear that in the right way. He's not saying necessarily, although we're gonna do a counterargument here, he m- he might not be saying, "Let the Jews eat, 'cause I'm not gonna feed the Gentiles." It's let them eat first, right?
Let them be given the bread first, 'cause that's the biblical pattern. I'm gonna first go to Adam and Eve. I'm gonna first go to Abraham.
I'm gonna first go to Elijah, but for the purpose of going to the nations. It's through them, not to the exclusion of all else but them. So he says, "Let the children be fed first, for it is not right to take the children's bread and throw it to the dogs." So first, what does it mean to take the children's bread?
What is the bread of Israel? What is the food that through Israel would feed them and bless the world? Well, it's none other than the Messiah himself.
Jesus identifies himself as the bread and does so in two bread stories of the feeding of the five thousand and the four thousand that we talked about a few weeks ago, where we talked about how Jesus shows that he is the bread that people feast on. And so right here, the bread of Israel is him. He is the Messiah, and he is the bread to the Jews first, because, hey, Jesus was Jewish, right?
Jesus was Jewish, and it was through the Jewish people that they birthed the Messiah, and then now this Messiah is going to the outskirts, the nations, those who had been considered unclean before. But why this language about the dogs? What is happening here?
The first and most important thing we have to hear is that Jesus cannot be using this derogatorily or offensively toward this woman, because he has shown again and again and again in passages slammed up right next to this one, that he has a deep heart and compassion for the outcasts, the Gentiles, the traditionally seen as unclean. Whenever he feeds the four thousand Gentiles, he's moved with compassion in his guts for them. Like, Jesus loves this Syrophoenician woman, and so it just cannot be that Jesus is calling her a dog.
So we're like, "Okay, what else is going on here then? Why does he use this dog language?" Well, first off, I think we have to see that I think what's happening here is Jesus is quoting the Jews of his day, that Jesus is posing to this woman a common parable or phrase used by the rabbis. And in rabbinic Jewish circles, they would talk about building their boundary lines around themselves and not going to the Gentiles by using this phrase.
"Well, we, we gotta make sure we eat first because we're... It's, it's wrong to take the things that God has given to the Jews and cast them to the Gentiles. It would be wrong to take the kosher food and give it to the Gentiles.
It'd be wrong to take the blessings of the temple and give it to the Gentiles. It would be wrong to take even the message of the Torah, which is the holy thing to them, and give it to the Gentiles." And so Jesus is quoting the common theology of the day among the Pharisees and scholars and the Jewish crowds, and he's posing that question to this Gentile woman and kind of saying: What would you do? What would you say with how the Jews see you?
What do you have to say about it? And so I think that's a bit of what's happening here. And then the, the word dog, um, it's very common in Jewish, uh, literature of this time.
Uh, even it's in rabbis', uh, writing. I think one rabbi said, "God, I thank you that I am not a Gentile, a woman, or a dog." Be offended by that. You're supposed to be.
Yep. Um, a- and then even in Josephus's writing, the famous Jewish historian that you might be, uh, familiar with, he refers to Gentiles as dogs. And so they are being derogatory there.
They are being, um, at least theologically exclusivist, if not racist, in what's happening here, and they are, chiefly of all for Mark's point, they are drawing lines between the included Je-- uh, Jews and the excluded Gentiles, and therefore neglecting the very purpose for which they were saved. They were saved to go to the Gentiles, not to ignore them.... and so they would call people dogs. Now, this word dog, some commentators have noted, noted, and I think it's, it's interesting, it helps the parable a little bit, that this word dog is not the common word used for a stray dog or a wild dog, but a small pet dog that you would keep in your home.
Which makes sense that she then applies the, um, the use of the word dog to a dog waiting at a table for the scraps that would fall. So, but I don't think that fixes [chuckles] a lot of the problems here. It's still comparing children to dogs.
Um, so we, we, we need to be hit by the scandal, and I think the scandal's coming not from Jesus calling this woman a dog, but for Jesus going, "You know what the Jews say about you, that you are these things. How am, how do you see it? Like, what's your response to this?" And the, the woman's response is absolutely incredible.
She answers Jesus' riddle. She understands, her ears are opened, her, her eyes can see, and she says this, she says, "Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs under the table eat the children's crumbs." This woman places herself, even derogatorily, into the parable with utter humility and desperation. She puts herself into the parable and shows that she understands it.
She knows that the Jews see her and her nation as dogs, but she also knows the truth, that the bread is what her and her country deeply need. She needs Jesus, and she is willing to take crumbs if that's all she can get. It's like the woman who would be like, "If I can just touch the fringe of his garment, I'd be healed." This woman's like, "Man, I'll take crumbs if I can just get some Jesus." Like, she will take anything she can get.
She is not above humbling herself in utter desperation to be like, "I will be a dog at the table if it's your table, Jesus. Like, I wanna be with you. I'll take whatever you can give me." And I think maybe it's because she knows the story of the last Syrophoenician woman who a Jewish healer interacted with in First Kings.
Because that kind of story would stick in the, um, cultural imagination of a country for, for decades, for, for, for centuries, especially back in oral cultures that passed stories down. This woman knows the story that Elijah took the crumbs of, of this Syrophoenician woman's food and turned it into a feast. So she's, she knows she's not settling for crumbs.
She's gonna get a whole meal, as long as she, she recognizes that the Jews eat first, and, and by that she means that the J... but through the Jews, Jesus will come to them, the Messiah will come to them. And so she knows exactly what she's saying. She's blessing Abraham's offspring because she knows that through him she will be blessed.
Crowd: Amen.
David: A beggar at Jesus' table is more well-fed than those with a seat of honor at a king's banquet. A dog in Jesus' house is more cared for than a precious baby in the house of a rich man.
Crowd: Amen.
David: And so in response to this utter desperation, this complete trust in who He is, in response to this, Jesus answers her, "For this statement, you may go your way. The demon has left your daughter." So what made this woman clean? What made her undefiled?
What made her daughter healed? What made her accepted, healed, and brought into the kingdom that Jesus was building? It wasn't that she solved the riddle.
It wasn't that she was super smart. [scoffs] It was her admission about the one thing that everyone else in the Book of Mark seems to be missing out on. It's that this is the Messiah, this is the bread of life, this is the one who is God in the flesh, who will heal our world, because our world is defiled and unclean, and this is the man, God in the flesh, who's here to heal and take away everything that's broken.
It's her utter dependence on Him. 'Cause no one else is making this confession. As Jesus goes and shares these parables, everybody's missing it.
Their hearts are getting hard, their ears are stopped up, their tongues are stilled from making a confession. Which is why Jesus then, in the next story, goes deeper into Gentile territory and finds a deaf and mute man. And He does this again to challenge what's happening in Israel at the time, because their ears were deaf to who He was, and their lips were mute to confessing that He was the Messiah.
And so He's gonna go and show in Gentile territory, among those that they thought would never hear, would never believe, would never proclaim, He's gonna open up a real man's deaf ears and loose a real man's mute tongue, and he's going to proclaim the excellencies of Jesus, both as, like, a sign of who Jesus is, but also as a rebuke against the Jews for not believing in who He is. So Jesus, like I said earlier, does this weird, circuitous horseshoe route to avoid Jewish territory, goes deeper into Gentile territory, and returns to the region of the Decapolis, but goes deeper into it this time, and this is where He healed the Gerasene demoniac. So again, news of Him had spread like wildfire.
He gets the, to the Decapolis, and people are swarming Him, and Jesus starts healing people. Again, this is a picture of what Israel was supposed to be, taking the light and healing and life of God into the nations and bringing His kingdom, and Jesus, as the chosen Jew, is doing that work. He's healing the nations.
And one man above all, though, gets brought to the top of Mark's narrative, and it is a mute and deaf man. And it's not by chance that it's these two ailments that Mark highlights here. He's making a point, because the Jews have been spiritually deaf to the message of Jesus, and they've not been confessing who He is, so has this man been physically deaf and physically mute....
That word mute is really interesting, so pardon me for just a little nerdy excursus, 'cause I think it actually opens up this whole passage for us. But this word mute, you would read this if you, um, were reading it in the original language, and you'd be like, "That's a weird word choice, Mark." We had way easier words for mute. Like, there are very basic words.
You're using this very strange word for mute or speech impediment, however it's, um, translated in your Bible, and he's doing that on purpose. It's the only time it occurs in the New Testament, and it only occurs one other time in the Greek translation of the Old Testament, called the Septuagint, and it occurs in Isaiah thirty-five. And in Isaiah thirty-five, the prophet Isaiah is talking about the nations.
He's talking about them, uh, metaphorically as a desert place and a wilderness place, uh, that's just arid and lifeless. But he says that water is going to rush through and irrigate the land, and trees and flowers and vineyards are gonna start sprouting up. And what's amazing is the cities that he says are gonna be built there is the city that Jesus is in right now in Mark seven.
And so he's combining these two things, and what's the sign that's gonna happen, uh, that w- that is gonna prove that these waterless lands are going to get watered? It's this. It's Isaiah thirty-five, five to six: "Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped.
Then shall the lame man leap like a deer, and the tongue of the mute," there's our word, "sing for joy."
Crowd: Amen.
David: Deaf ears will be opened, mute tongues will sing when God starts to recreate the world and heal the nations by bringing water into the desert through His chosen servant. And so now let's return to Mark's story and see what is happening with all that in mind. So Jesus has brought this deaf and mute man in the same region where this miracle in Isaiah thirty-five says it's gonna take place, and what does Jesus do to heal him?
He spits. That's weird! Okay, it's weird.
I got two weird stories back to back. Thanks, Hayden. [laughing] But He spits, seven thirty-three: "Taking him, the deaf man, aside from the crowd privately, Jesus put His fingers into his ears, and then after spitting, touched his tongue." Come on, Jesus, don't you know about COVID?
Don't, don't... What are you doing? [laughing] Sorry, I couldn't help myself.
Okay, um, so but why does Jesus spit? He doesn't do this all the time. It's not like His, He's got magic spit, and that's why He always heals people that way.
He's doing it really intentionally here. Jesus spits, and, and this has confused commentators for centuries, and it confuses me, but I, I like a few explanations. One is this: I'm convinced that Jesus is continuelling- is continuing to fulfill the prophecy from Isaiah thirty-five about this water coming into a desert place.
He's got this desert place and a mute and deaf man He wants to heal, and it says that all that will happen when water rushes in. And so Jesus is like, "I don't know. I don't have any water here." [spits] Right?
[chuckles] He's like, "I'll be the water in the dry, arid wilderness." And He's showing that He's the one who's going to bring healing to the world, to the places that no one thought could be healed, the places on the earth and on the map, geographically, ethnically, religiously, that people thought God would never go. And it's those, those people who they have always felt like they're on the outside of what Jesus was doing, that He's showing, [spits] "I'll be water. I'll come in, and I'll rush towards you and heal your land." Another really cool reason, it's a little strange, that people have pointed out is that the bodily fluids, um, of a, of, like, a Jew are seen as unclean, and whenever your bodily fluids are expelled, you have to go wash and clean up.
You can actually read about that in the Torah. And so, um, spit wasn't included. That was one of the extra barricades that they put around.
And so Jesus uses what the Jews would see as unclean to do an act of cleansing, further poking on the stuff that Jesus has been poking on this whole time. Jesus is hilarious. Um, and so He, He's doing this, uh, and then some have also noted that, uh, it, that this might be a foreshadowing to another bodily fluid that Jesus will expel to heal the nations.
'Cause on the cross, His blood is what was expelled to heal the nations that, that have always needed His healing touch. But however you see it, Jesus is continuing the narrative that He is the chosen one from God, from the Jewish people, to go and bring healing to all nations. And then immediately after Jesus heals, the crowd responds.
We don't have time to go into why He told them to be quiet and all that stuff, but it's... There's a lot there. We had to skip a lot, but the story concludes with this beautiful confession from the crowd, and we can't miss this.
Seven thirty-seven: "And they were all astonished beyond measure, saying, 'He has done all things well.'" Another way to translate this, 'cause it's just three simple words, but it's, "Everything He has done is good." Everything He has done is good. This act of new creation happens, and then the crowd responds, "Everything He has done is good." This hearkens back to Genesis one. After God has done everything to recreate the world out of darkness and chaos, and what does He say?
Ah, He looked at everything He's done and says, "It is good." This is new creation language. Jesus is bringing His new creation power to the unwanted, uh, unclean, unreachable parts of the world and showing that it's there He'll build His kingdom. It's among these kinds of people that He'll perform His greatest works.
It's through Jesus, the chosen Jew from Abraham's line, that God will recreate all nations. Okay.... What do we do with all of this?
How do we land the plane? Two things I've meditated on that I wanna share with you quickly. One, and I just- this has been the thing I'm like, "God, just do the work, 'cause I don't know how to communicate what you've kind of been doing in my heart through this to my, my friends and family here at Bridgeway." But there's just this beautiful way that the Syrophoenician woman came to Jesus.
She came to him asking for crumbs. She came to him willing to be seen as a dog, if that meant she got to come into his house and sit under his table. She was willing to strip all vestiges of pride, and outward appearance, and self-reliance, and her ethnic story, and her religious upbringing, and her family, and where she's from, and she's just like, "I don't care if I don't belong, just let me have crumbs at the table." And like, I just want faith like that.
I just wanna see Jesus like that, that I would just come begging. And then what's amazing is, Jesus takes those little crumbs of faith, like Elijah took the crumbs from the Syrophoenician woman, and turns it into an eternal feast that feeds her forever. This dog comes into the house begging for crumbs, and then Jesus says, "No, no, no, come, you're a child.
Sit at my table, and I'll feed you forever, for I am the bread of life." And like, I just wanna come to Jesus like that, 'cause he tells those stories over and over again, like the para- parable of the Prodigal Son, where the Prodigal Son's like, "Oh, Father, just let me be a slave in your house." And he's like, "Oh, no, I'm gonna put my best robe on you, and, and I'm gonna kill the fattened calf." And, and then, uh, you hear stories about, "Don't take the seats of, of pride and status at, at certain tables. Instead, take the lowest seat, so that way, then the master of the feast, he'll come up to you and say, 'Hey, humble person, come up and sit with me.'" Like, this is just how God's kingdom works, and I just love that this woman saw that. And so I just wanna say, if you are just full of pride [chuckles] like the Jews that Jesus is poking on, and you don't come to Jesus humble, begging, needy, you won't actually get to taste how good his meal is.
Like, meditate on this woman's desperation, and see that you need that meal, too. But also, if you feel completely outcast, completely unchosen, completely unwanted, on the outskirts, maybe you're a part of an ethnic group, or a family, or a religion, or, um, a, a set of practices or sins in your, in your life, and you're like, "I could not even dare come to Jesus' table," this Syrophoenician woman has blazed a path for you. And she was like, "Sure, come like a dog and beg, and he'll make you a son, and seat you at his table, and feed you forever." [audience cheering] Ah!
[audience applauding] Okay, one more thing. I also feel like we have to receive Jesus' warning here. I've been doing this the whole time, if you haven't noticed, [chuckles] to try to talk about these border lines [chuckles] that the Jews drew, Jews drew, try to say that three times fast, around themselves to, to say, "Let's keep ourselves safe, distinctly Jewish, um, completely untainted and clean, and when we do that, us and God will be okay, and we'll be fine, as long as we stay distinctly Jewish." And I was just really convicted by that, thinking that we do the same thing in Christian bubbles today.
That we're like, "Let's just separate from the culture. Let's make those lines really clear. We're not gonna see those movies.
We're not gonna go to those restaurants, or that bar, or hang out with those people, or eat or drink that food. Uh, we're not gonna vote this way. We're not gonna..." And we're just like, "Okay, this is what it means to be a Christian in America, in Oklahoma City." And it's like, we're of no use to the world now!
[audience cheering] Right? [audience applauding] And, and just like the Jews, when they've insulated themselves off, they, they lost their calling to the nations. They couldn't, they couldn't do what Jesus was doing.
They couldn't go to the people Jesus was going to, because they thought they were unclean. They were like, "Oh, if I, if I, if I interact with those people in those ways, or forgive them, or accept them, I don't even know who I am anymore." And it's like, I think if we had certain people in our homes or in our church, we'd be like, "I don't even recognize this place anymore." Stop it! That is sinful behavior.
Yeah. We need to repent of our ethnocentrism, of our America first-ism, of our evangelical worldview first-ism, and we need to go to the nations. We need to follow Jesus where he went, which is to the unreached, the unwanted, the unaccepted.
Because if we don't, he's gonna be using this story to condemn us, like he did the Jews of his day. So let us repent. Let us come to Jesus' table, willing to be dogs begging for scraps.
And I just can't believe the song Tyler started the whole thing with. Look at... Look what God has done.
Like, look what he's doing for his church. Who are we, that he would save us? That's what the Syrophoenician woman said, "Who are we, that he would save us?" Who are we, that he would send us?
That we get to be part of his ministry, to bring his new creation life to the world. [upbeat music]
Outro: Thank you for listening to the Spoken Gospel podcast. Spoken Gospel creates short films, devotionals, and podcasts like this one. Everything we make is free because of generous supporters like you. To see our resources, visit spokengospel.com or subscribe to our YouTube channel. Thanks for listening. See you next time. [upbeat music]
