Do YOU Get It?

Mark 7:24-37
Length: 15:31

This is a message given on September 6, 2009 at the Bowdertown United Methodist Church.

Our Scripture this morning involves two different episodes in the life of Christ. The healing of the Syro-Phoenician woman’s daughter and the healing in Decapolis.

As we saw last week, the Pharisees and the crowd are becoming a little more hostile to Jesus and His disciples. So Jesus takes His disciples to Tyre for some private time, where He can further instruct and prepare His disciples for the future.

Somehow, this Syro-Phoenician women, a Greek gentile, finds Jesus and requests help for her daughter. She has a simple problem. Her daughter is demon-possessed. She knows Jesus can help her, even though she has no right coming to a Jew for help.

Essentially, this gentile women is asking to be blessed by the Jewish Messiah. The women asks Jesus for help, and she does it in a respectfully way and appealing to His Jewish heritage. Jesus hears this and wants her to understand who He really is before He will heal the daughter. So he initially rejects the request by ignoring her.

This seems strange to us. This does not sound like the kind, caring, compassionate Jesus that we all love and know and talk about. He has always helped those in need and this lady is way up there on the needy list. Her daughter is demon-possessed.

The women is persistent though and keeps bugging Jesus, following Him around, and begging and pleading for help. According to the parallel account in Matthew 15, the disciples become annoyed with this women and ask Jesus to address the situation.

The women leaves any pride and dignity she may have and comes to kneel and beg at the feet of Jesus to help her daughter. Jesus flat out tells her that His first responsibility was to preach the gospel to the children of Israel, the Jews.

He then equates her to a dog. To the Jews dogs were dirty animals and it was also a common term the Jews gave to Gentiles. So Jesus is calling this women a dirty dog! That really doesn’t sound like Jesus does it!

This woman was a Greek and the Greeks viewed dogs much like we do today, as wonderful pets and companions. The women responds by saying, even dogs receive table scrapes and crumbs right?

Now it all starts to make sense. Jesus came to preach to the Jews first, but this also meant that there would be a time for the Gentiles to receive God’s blessings as well. This women knew Jesus could help her daughter and now she also realize that she too could be a part of God’s Kingdom.

With this realization she is now ready to receive God’s blessings through Jesus and He is happy to grant her the healing she requested for her daughter. The daughter is healed. Now, this is not the first miracle done for the Gentiles, but it does make it clear that Gentile are part of God’s Kingdom.

The second portion of our Scripture this morning involves another healing and even into Mark chapter 8 we read about the feeding of the 4,000 people. There is really no new presentation of anything with these portions of Scripture.

The only difference we see is from this point on Jesus starts to include the Gentiles into more of His activities and teachings. We need to keep this in mind as we continue to study the life of Christ.

After healing the women’s daughter, Jesus leaves with His disciples to Decaoplis, another Gentile area. The last time He was in this area He cast out a demon and sent the demon into a herd of pigs which all killed themselves. The locals were a little upset and threw Jesus out of their city.

The townspeople heard Jesus was in the area and brought a deaf man, who could hardly talk, to see Jesus for healing. The man’s friends ask Jesus to help him. Jesus takes the man to a private area. Again, Jesus is on a heavenly time table and is not trying to impress crowds, rather He is trying to stir the faith of people.

Jesus puts His fingers in to the man’s ears and spits on His tongue. Then He prays, “Be Opened.” The man is immediately healed. He can hear and talk normally. Jesus commands the Gentiles as He did to the Jews, not to speak of this miracle to anyone.

Again, He did not come as a physical healer and provider. He came as Savior to the world. From the parallel account in Matthew 15, we read that large crowds came to him, bringing their lame, blind, and sick to Jesus for healing.

Just like the Jews, the Gentiles were coming to Jesus for those physical needs, not Spiritual needs. They too missed the point.

That is the question for you this morning, Have you missed the point? Jesus came to save sinners. That was His main purpose. Along the way he helped many people with their physical or mental troubles, but His goal was to save their souls.

Many people spend a lot of time ministering to the physical needs of the poor, sick, and dying, which is great. We should be doing that. But how much time do you spend ministering to the spiritual needs of people.

Think about it the next time you are ministering to the physical needs of someone, try adding a little Spiritual nourishment to the routine as well.


Closing Prayer
Heavenly Father, we thank you for sending your son to us. Not to heal us or feed us physically or mentally. But to save us from our sin. Help us to convey that message to others we meet this week. As we come to your table this morning, enable us to truly recognize your hand in this world and in our lives. AMEN.