Hello people, how are you? I write today on an extract from what was preached in Church. The scripture is from Matthew 15:21-28.
Matthew 15:21-28
21 Jesus left that place and went off to the territory near the cities of Tyre and Sidon. 22 A Canaanite woman who lived in that region came to him. “Son of David!” she cried out. “Have mercy on me, sir! My daughter has a demon and is in a terrible condition.”
23 But Jesus did not say a word to her. His disciples came to him and begged him, “Send her away! She is following us and making all this noise!”
24 Then Jesus replied, “I have been sent only to the lost sheep of the people of Israel.”
25 At this the woman came and fell at his feet. “Help me, sir!” she said.
26 Jesus answered, “It isn’t right to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.”
27 “That’s true, sir,” she answered; “but even the dogs eat the leftovers that fall from their masters’ table.”
28 So Jesus answered her, “You are a woman of great faith! What you want will be done for you.” And at that very moment her daughter was healed.
The above scripture may disturb some people because here Jesus is approached by a woman in desperation and here she appears to be spoken to harshly. To give you some background on this scripture, I would like to say that things then were heating up in Israel and there were certain leaders scheming to trap Jesus & Jesus left Israel for sometime as per His Father’s will. Let us go back to the Old Testament to see what God said about the fate intended for Tyre, Sidon and the surrounding regions.
Joel 3:4-8
4 “What are you trying to do to me, Tyre, Sidon, and all the regions of Philistia? Are you trying to pay me back for something? If you are, I will quickly pay you back! 5 You have taken my silver and gold and carried my rich treasures into your temples. 6 You have taken the people of Judah and Jerusalem far from their own country and sold them to the Greeks. 7 Now I am going to bring them out of the places to which you have sold them. I will do to you what you have done to them. 8 I will let your sons and daughters be sold to the people of Judah; they will sell them to the far-off Sabeans. I, the Lord, have spoken.
So you can see God’s plan for the people of Tyre, Sidon and the surrounding regions was that of a reaction to their own actions. Needless to say, their children would suffer. Jesus’ word in Matthew 15:24 is not that He was meant to save only Israel but rather sticking to scripture, prophetically that God sent His Son to a people He chose & called His own. Yes I do also have scripture to back me saying that in Jesus, His death and faith in Him made Salvation available to even Gentiles (non-Jews; rest of the world).
Acts 26:23
that the Messiah must suffer and be the first one to rise from death, to announce the light of salvation to the Jews and to the Gentiles.”
Galatians 3:8-13
8 The scripture predicted that God would put the Gentiles right with himself through faith. And so the scripture announced the Good News to Abraham: “Through you God will bless the whole human race.” 9 Abraham believed and was blessed; so all who believe are blessed as he was.
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13 But by becoming a curse for us Christ has redeemed us from the curse that the Law brings; for the scripture says, “Anyone who is hanged on a tree is under God’s curse.” 14 Christ did this in order that the blessing which God promised to Abraham might be given to the Gentiles by means of Christ Jesus, so that through faith we might receive the Spirit promised by God.
Colossians 2:13-14
13 You were at one time spiritually dead because of your sins and because you were Gentiles without the Law. But God has now brought you to life with Christ. God forgave us all our sins; 14 he cancelled the unfavourable record of our debts with its binding rules and did away with it completely by nailing it to the cross.
You may come to understand that it was the time of the death of Christ and after that salvation was made available to the Gentiles (Col 2:13-14).The Bible says in Ecclesiastes 8:6 that there is a right time and right way for everything of which we know little. When Jesus was approached by His mother, to help with the shortage of wine mentioned in John 2:1-12; Jesus helped by turning water to wine but he did say that it was not yet His time to work miracles in His ministry. So in the same way, the right time for salvation to be declared to the woman in Matthew 15:21-28 would be the time of the cross and after.
Ecclesiastes 8:6
6 There is a right time and a right way to do everything, but we know so little!
We must know that God being God, always stands by what he says and Jesus’ reaction to the woman is because of what He spoke through the prophet Joel in the fifth or fourth century BC about Tyre Sidon and the surrounding regions. However the Bible also says that God is love, let’s read this scripture and also read about what exactly is this love.
1 John 4:8-11
8 Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love. 9 And God showed his love for us by sending his only Son into the world, so that we might have life through him. 10 This is what love is: it is not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the means by which our sins are forgiven.
11 Dear friends, if this is how God loved us, then we should love one another.
1 Corinthians 13:4-7
4 Love is patient and kind; it is not jealous or conceited or proud; 5 love is not ill-mannered or selfish or irritable; love does not keep a record of wrongs; 6 love is not happy with evil, but is happy with the truth. 7 Love never gives up; and its faith, hope, and patience never fail.
Despite this woman’s fate was sealed (Joel 3:4-8), as her daughter was enslaved to the demon that tormented her. Jesus being a God of love chose to save this woman, who acknowledged Him as the Messiah (Matthew 15:22 – Son of David), Master (Matthew 15:27) and God (Matthew 15:25). The Bible says that Jesus does not turn away anyone who comes to Him, even if the person was condemned, for these are they the Father has drawn to His Son to be saved.
John 6:37-44
37 Everyone whom my Father gives me will come to me. I will never turn away anyone who comes to me, 38 because I have come down from heaven to do not my own will but the will of him who sent me. 39 And it is the will of him who sent me that I should not lose any of all those he has given me, but that I should raise them all to life on the last day. 40 For what my Father wants is that all who see the Son and believe in him should have eternal life. And I will raise them to life on the last day.”
41 The people started grumbling about him, because he said, “I am the bread that came down from heaven.” 42 So they said, “This man is Jesus son of Joseph, isn’t he? We know his father and mother. How, then, does he now say he came down from heaven?”
43 Jesus answered, “Stop grumbling among yourselves. 44 No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him to me; and I will raise him to life on the last day.
As the Bible says, faith in Jesus comes from hearing God (Romans 10:17); it is a gift that draws us strongly to Jesus, which saves us from damnation (Romans 4:16-17). In the scripture of Matthew 15, this woman had heard of Jesus (Romans 10:18) and from what she heard she had great faith. Nothing could beat her down, she stood strong in the fact that Jesus alone could save the situation, the faith that God gave her was so strong that she did not have to wait till the time of cross to honour Jesus as people honoured God the Father during her time (John5:23), so she and her household were saved & like Abraham her faith was credited to her as righteousness (Romans 4:22-25).
Romans 10:17-18
17 So then, faith comes from hearing the message, and the message comes through preaching Christ.
18 But I ask: is it true that they did not hear the message? Of course they did — for as the scripture says:
“The sound of their voice went out to all the world;
their words reached the ends of the earth.”
Romans 4:16-17, 22-25
And so the promise was based on faith, in order that the promise should be guaranteed as God’s free gift to all of Abraham’s descendants — not just to those who obey the Law, but also to those who believe as Abraham did. For Abraham is the spiritual father of us all; 17 as the scripture says, “I have made you father of many nations.” So the promise is good in the sight of God, in whom Abraham believed — the God who brings the dead to life and whose command brings into being what did not exist.
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22 That is why Abraham, through faith, “was accepted as righteous by God”. 23 The words “he was accepted as righteous” were not written for him alone. 24 They were written also for us who are to be accepted as righteous, who believe in him who raised Jesus our Lord from death. 25 Because of our sins he was handed over to die, and he was raised to life in order to put us right with God.
John 5:23
23 so that all will honour the Son in the same way as they honour the Father. Whoever does not honour the Son does not honour the Father who sent him.
Making known the Defeated Dragon 