Scraps from the Master’s Table

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So there’s a cherry pie thing. It’s not exactly cherry pie. There’s Cool Whip involved, which makes everything better.

But there’s this cherry pie thing that my mother-in-law makes for family events that I just love. And she knows how much I love it. And so she used to make an extra one for our house, which was good in one sense and not good in another.

But I love this stuff. And I recall that there was one family event we went to that they, by the time I got there to get some, all the pieces were gone. And I was not happy, right?

But what was I to do? I grabbed the pie plate and carried it off with me to where I was sitting and scraped all the little scraps out the bottom of it because the stuff was that good. It was good enough that even if I just got a few scraps, I wanted those scraps.

They were coming with me. Sometimes you’re willing to accept scraps depending on the situation. Certain of my children have inherited my germaphobe trait.

Others have not. I see confusion over here. Some of you all are cleaner than others, right?

Yes? Makes sense? Yes.

And I’m not going to ask you to name names. We all know. We all know who’s cleaner than others.

And so as a result, some of my children will not eat after others of my children. Because, you know. But when I see the germaphobe children, and this has happened just recently, I feel like they tell us they’re hungry all the time.

Suddenly, everybody went through a growth spurt when inflation hit and the food prices went up. right? That couldn’t have come at a different time.

But suddenly they’re hungry. Well, you’re always telling us you’re hungry. Like Jojo uses hungry as her word for tired and sad and Tuesday.

I mean, that’s just, so I don’t really know when to believe them. But when one of the germaphobe children says I’m hungry and then picks up the leftovers that belong to one of the not germaphobe children and is willing to eat it. Okay.

I know you’re desperate. I know you’re desperate at that moment, that they are hungry and so they are willing to eat somebody else’s scraps. When I say scraps, I just mean what’s left in their bowl, not eating out of the garbage.

We are not to that point yet, even with inflation. But sometimes, depending on your circumstances, you’re willing to do with scraps rather than nothing at all. And Mark tells the story of a lady who was so desperate that she was willing to ask for scraps from Jesus.

Tonight we’re going to look at that story. This lady is not asking for scraps of food, but she’s asking and willing to accept a little sliver of a blessing. See, she’s not entitled to anything from Jesus.

And if she’s given the choice between scraps from the table or nothing when it comes to a blessing from Jesus, she’s willing to take the scraps from the table. And so if you would turn with me tonight to Mark chapter 7. Mark chapter 7, that’s where we’re going to be tonight.

It’ll be on the screen for you as well as there’s a link in your bulletin if you’re using a device tonight. But once you find it, if you’re able to stand without too much trouble, if you would stand with me. And we’re going to look at verses 24 through 30 tonight.

Mark 7, 24 through 30. It says, From there he arose and went to the region of Tyre and Sidon. And he entered a house and wanted no one to know it, but he could not be hidden.

For a woman whose young daughter had an unclean spirit heard about him, and she came and fell at his feet. The woman was a Greek, a Syrophoenician by birth, and she kept asking him to cast the demon out of her daughter. But Jesus said to her, Let the children be filled first, for it is not good to take the children’s bread and throw it to the little dogs.

And she answered and said to him, Yes, Lord, yet even the little dogs under the table eat from the children’s crumbs. Then he said to her, For this saying, go your way. The demon has gone out of your daughter.

And when she had come to her house, she found the demon gone out and her daughter lying on the bed. And you may be seated. Now, I’m going to be honest with you.

I mean, not that I’m not normally honest, but I’m going to be extra honest with you tonight and tell you this story has for a long time made me uncomfortable. Now, many people, unfortunately, come to something in the Bible that’s uncomfortable for them and say, well, the Bible must be wrong. I don’t do that.

I figure there’s something I don’t understand or my perspective needs to change if something in the Bible makes me uncomfortable. But what has made me uncomfortable about this story for a long time is in a lot of translations, including the one I grew up reading, it says, it’s just very blunt in Jesus’ approach to this woman where he tells her, basically you’re going to have to wait because it is not fitting to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs. Which doesn’t sound all that different from what we just read, but a little bit of wording can make a difference in the connotation.

And it sounds like, and it might even sound harsh to you in the translation we just read, where it says throwing bread to the little dogs, it might sound as though Jesus is calling her a dog. Which if we stop and think about it, doesn’t fit with what we know about Jesus. It’s unusual, the idea that Jesus would hurl an insult at somebody.

And so we have to figure out, is that really what’s going on here? Or does Jesus have a reason for this? I start from the premise that if Jesus does it, it’s not wrong, right?

That’s my basic operating thought here. If Jesus does it, it’s not wrong, but I need to understand why. And so I’ve struggled with this story for years and years.

I have preacher friends who’ve struggled with this story. And one of my good friends has taught this as, you know, maybe Jesus is saying this to sort of poke fun at the Pharisees, and she seems to be in on the joke. I like that interpretation, but I don’t see really that the Pharisees are right there at that moment, because Jesus has gone outside of Israel at this point.

As we read that He’s gone to Tyre and Sidon, and He’s in this area where this Gentile woman is, Jesus for really the only time that I recall in his ministry has gone outside of the borders of Israel, or it wasn’t called Israel at the time, it was Galilee and it was Judea, but he’s gone outside of a Jewish area to a predominantly Gentile area. So as much as I’d like to say that’s the answer, I don’t think that is. So we need to understand what is going on here and what Jesus is saying to her, what all of this means.

And tonight I’d like to try to give you the answer that I’ve come up with out of this. What it is that Jesus is actually saying to her, what their conversation is about. Is Jesus insulting her?

Is he calling her a dog? And spoiler alert, I don’t think he’s insulting her. As a matter of fact, I think he’s offering her grace beyond what she could have imagined and certainly beyond what she deserved.

The first thing that we need to understand is Matthew and Mark both set the scene that this woman and her family were separated far from God. Now it says here in verse 26 that this woman was a Greek. Many times when we see that label applied to somebody in the New Testament, it does not mean that they or their family are actually from Greece.

Greek, to call somebody a Greek, was kind of a generalization to say that somebody was, they were a Gentile. Sorry, the word eluded me for just a second. It means that they were a Gentile.

Sort of like when we talk about, in my family, we talk about going to the doctor. And are you going to this doctor? Are you going to that doctor?

Are you going to the Indian doctor? And if we’re not, we’re saying, no, we’re going to the white doctor. I know that probably sounds nuts.

We do say that though. That doesn’t mean that we only go see white doctors. It just means, no, it’s not the Indian clinic.

The Amish call everybody who’s not one of them, the English. Now you might be French, you might be Swedish, but you’re the English. We use terminology like this in our world.

For them, if you were not a Jew, you were a Greek. It was another way of saying Gentile. So it doesn’t mean she’s actually from Greece.

But for her to be a Greek or to be a Gentile, it means she was not part of the covenant that God made with Israel. God had this, basically everybody that Jesus dealt with in his ministry up to this point, for the most part, they were Jews. Now they may have been wrong in their thinking about the covenant, but they were at least part of this covenant that God had made with Abraham.

This woman is not. She is a stranger from that covenant. She’s not part of God’s promises that He made to Abraham.

On top of that, it says in verse 26 that she’s Syrophoenician by birth, or Syrophoenician. I may pronounce it both ways. It’s the same word.

That means that her people were not followers of the one true God. As a matter of fact, people from Syrophoenicia, they were also called Canaanites at times. Matthew calls her a Canaanite.

That is not a contradiction. In your handout, I explain what all they’re talking about by saying Greek, Canaanite, and Syrophoenician. They’re talking about different things.

Talking about religion, they’re talking about culture, they’re talking about ethnicity. There’s all these labels attached to her. And all of those labels intend to show that she’s not part of God’s promises.

But for her to be a Syrophoenician, they were worshippers of Baal and Asherah. They were worshipers of some of these same old false gods that the Israelites had had to do battle with their followers all throughout the Old Testament. The ones that Elijah called down fire on the sacrifice with.

They were the servants of Baal and Asherah. They were worshiping false gods. They were cutting themselves as blood offerings to the false gods.

They were worshiping trees. They were doing all of these bizarre things. She’s part of that group of people.

Now, I don’t know if she herself worshipped Baal and Asherah, but she was part of that group of people. And so she was not the sort of person who normally would have even sought Jesus out. She’s the sort of person who would have completely ignored Jesus and gone on with her pagan superstitions.

But this woman sought Jesus out. As a matter of fact, if we read what Matthew says in Matthew 15, verse 33, it says she sought Jesus out so, I’m sorry, verse 23, she sought Jesus out so persistently that it irritated the disciples, which sometimes it kind of seems like they had a short fuse, but still she’s asking repeatedly. She is insistent.

She wants to see Jesus. This is the are we there yet? Are we there yet?

Are we there yet? Of appointments with Jesus. It was driving them crazy.

And they said, tell her to leave us alone because she won’t stop bothering us. Well, this shows us something about her desperation. She had come to Jesus because there was nowhere else to turn.

There was nowhere else to turn. Her daughter was possessed by a demon and the only thing she had to turn to were these false gods which were themselves demonic. And Jesus made the point, you don’t cast out Satan by the power of Satan.

When He said the famous phrase, a house divided against itself does not stand. So she came and verse 26 tells us she kept asking Him to cast the demon out of her daughter. So not only does she come from this background where she’s not even part of God’s promises, she has nothing to do with God’s promises, but in her own household, there was this evil presence that was plaguing her household, that was affecting her family.

It wrought havoc on her daughter’s life. I mean, obviously this was a problem if she was going and seeking out Jesus. It would have wrought havoc on her home and on her family, but there was nothing that she or her false pagan gods could do about it.

Her only hope was Jesus. Her only hope was Jesus. So we see somebody who is in a desperate, desperate, desperate situation, as far away from God as she practically could be.

And yet God the Son walks into her village and she says, what about him? And goes to him. Now Jesus makes it clear to her that his first priority was to minister to the Jews.

We know from seeing the end of the story that he came to be the Savior of all of humanity, all of mankind, Jews, Gentiles, it didn’t matter. He came to bring salvation to the Jews and the Gentiles alike. But at this particular moment in time, Remember, Jesus was focused on how to get to that point, how to get to the cross.

That’s why early on we saw so many times He stepped away from the crowds. He didn’t want a massive following, and we would look at that and say, that’s crazy, surely you’d want as many people around you as possible to spread your message to. But His thing was, if they follow me too closely, and too many of the people fall in love with me, they’re never going to want to send me to the cross, they’re going to want to put me on the throne.

And so Jesus was navigating this very skillfully. Being God, you tend to be skilled at things, right? But he was navigating this narrow road that led to the cross.

And that’s why he said, it’s not time yet. I’m not here to focus on ministry to the Gentiles. At this particular moment in time, his priority was to minister to the people of Israel, the Jewish people of Israel, those who were part of the covenant.

Now, eventually they would reject him and his ministry would be opened up to the Gentiles, but it wasn’t time yet. And so in Matthew 15, 24, he tells her, I was not sent except to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. It doesn’t mean that he intended only ever to save the Jews.

It didn’t mean that he intended only ever to minister to the Jews, but it means his reason for coming was to fulfill the promises that God made in that covenant thousands of years before. this is something he needed her to understand because it’s something he needed the disciples to understand it’s something he needed the pharisees to understand because there were so many questions still raging everything being up in the air about who he was and what he had come to do he wanted everybody to understand that he was there as the messiah to fulfill god’s promises to israel and so he was making the point to her I’m not here to deal with y’all yet and so he says in verse 27 and let the children be filled first. He’s speaking again about the priority of the Jews in his mission. I came here first to teach the Jews.

I came here first to minister to my own people. But again, Jesus was not excluding the Gentiles from his ministry for all time. He was not excluding the Gentiles from salvation.

He makes that clear in numerous places after this. They were eventually going to get their turn. He was just saying it’s not time yet.

It’s not time yet. And that’s what brings us to verse 27, which tends to be a little uncomfortable, I think, until we read it in this context of understanding who she is and what she’s asking for and what his concern is. Jesus said to her, this is after he said, let the little children be filled first, for it is not good to take the children’s bread and throw it to the little dogs.

Now when he speaks here about the children and their bread, the children are the people of Israel. The children are the Jewish people. They are literally God’s children under the old covenant.

And this bread are his ministry, the blessings that he has to offer. It’s all of the good stuff he’s handing out, whether it’s physical healing, whether it’s actual literal bread feeding thousands of people, whether it’s the spiritual bread, the stuff that he’s offering is there for the children of Israel. And then we have the little dogs and they’re the Gentiles.

For him to call the Gentiles the little dogs in this phrase, it’s not a statement comparing the value of the Gentiles and the Jews. It’s not saying you’re worth less. He’s not saying you’re a dog and they’re children and so you’re worth less and the sight of God.

It’s not about their value. It’s just about their priority. We take the whole statement together.

It’s not good to take the children’s bread and throw it to little dogs. He’s using a household analogy that they would understand. I don’t get up and make toast or whatever the eggs, whatever the kids want to eat, and then make sure the dog has his fill first. It’s just a statement of priorities.

Now, in many cases, the dog does get toast and eggs. The dog had grits this morning because I wanted some grits for breakfast and I just couldn’t get them to turn out right. So the dog had grits for breakfast and I went to Brahms because I was running out of time.

But sometimes the dog does get fed, but the dog doesn’t get fed first. So when you take all of that together, he’s not talking about her value. He’s talking about the priority, who was going to be first. And dog is not an insult. I think that’s why it sounds so harsh in some translations when he says, give the food to the dogs.

But there is a word in Greek that is used for dog, and this is a separate word that’s related, and it really points more toward little puppies, house pets. Not the idea where the Pharisees would have called her as a Gentile a dog, and they’re talking about a wild, filthy animal that lives out in the streets and eats garbage and chases people. It’s not that connotation at all.

It’s a gentler word. It’s talking about these dogs that are part of the household. and so he’s not calling them the Gentiles dogs to devalue them he’s indicating their priority they will have a turn they will be included just not yet it’s not time for that yet because especially the Gentiles they would have dogs in their homes that sometimes they were pets sometimes they were working animals but they would have dogs they would value them and the dogs of the household would be fed but the children would be fed first they should be fed first if our priorities are right And again, using this different word for dog, the Pharisees would have used this word to exclude her.

They say, you are not part of God’s covenant. You’re a filthy dog. Filthy Gentile dog.

Jesus uses a different word that actually places her in the household. She’s not the dog in the street. She’s one that’s been grafted into the household.

So it seems to be a play on words, a play on what she would have expected to hear from a Jewish teacher. that he is actually being far gentler to her than any rabbi she would have ever spoken to or heard from because he’s actually giving her a place in the household. So all of this is to say that Jesus came to minister to the Jews first and he would get to the Gentiles when it was time.

And when we look at it in that context, it’s not nearly as harsh. Maybe it’s not harsh at all. Of course, the question still might occur to us.

It occurred to me, why not just help her? Why does Jesus need to go into all of this and emphasize where she stands and what she deserves. And I think there’s a few reasons for it.

Jesus was always teaching. Jesus was always teaching. That’s what good teachers do.

He was always teaching. And some of the message was for the disciples. Some of the message was for her as well, but a lot of it was for the disciples.

And I think there are a few things that he was teaching by bringing this up about the priority of the Jews and the Gentiles. I think he wants to reinforce the idea that he’d come in fulfillment of the scripture, that he is the Messiah. He’s there to fulfill God’s promises to Israel, as I mentioned.

He wants them to understand who he is, and so he has to make clear what his priorities are. I think also he wants to make the point that there would be a place for the Gentiles in his covenant. He could have just dismissed her as a dog instead of one of the little dogs.

He could have just dismissed her out of hand as a dog the way any other rabbi would have, but he didn’t do that. I think he wanted her and the disciples to understand that there was going to be room for Gentiles in the kingdom. But I think also if we look at Matthew again, Matthew 15, 28, where he says, oh woman, great is your faith in response to her response to him.

I think Jesus was setting this all up to illustrate just how remarkable her faith was in spite of her not being one of God’s covenant people. And we see this over and over again through scripture that many times it’s God’s people who are standing back questioning God, And it’s God’s people who are standing about doubting God’s ability. And it’s somebody from the outside who comes in and shows us what faith looks like.

And in this case, while his disciples who were with him day in and day out still had questions and still didn’t understand and still couldn’t wrap their brains around who Jesus is, she comes with this incredible faith believing that he can do anything. She’s not even one of the sheep that he came to. And she still believes.

And I think there’s a lesson in there for us that it’s faith that Jesus values. It’s not where we’ve come from. It’s not our background.

It’s whether or not we’re willing to take him at his word. And there could have been more to Jesus’ intentions, but I think that was a big part of it, these things, that Jesus was teaching. And so instead of just helping her, he set the stage for all these lessons to be taught.

And to understand who she was, that she was this far separated from God, and that Jesus hadn’t even come to reach people like her at that moment, we realize just how gracious His response is to her. You see, she came looking for grace, and she received grace. She didn’t come looking for what she deserved.

She came looking for His grace. And grace is a church word, but it just means undeserved kindness. The kindness of God that we don’t deserve.

If we could deserve it, it’s not grace. So she comes looking for grace. I know I don’t deserve this.

It wasn’t time to minister to the Gentiles. It wasn’t part of the mission. It wasn’t part of his reason for being there at that point, but she asked him to help her anyway.

He had all the reasons laid out why maybe she shouldn’t have been asking, and she asks anyway. So when he makes this statement, and by the way, I don’t think any of this caught Jesus off guard. I also operate from the premise that he knew the end from the beginning.

And so I don’t think Jesus went, oh, she’s got a good point, and changed his mind. I believe Jesus set the stage for this whole thing to happen and knew that he was going to help her. But there were all these reasons on paper why she shouldn’t have asked for his help.

She asked anyway. So when he said, it’s not fit to take the bread from the children and give it to the little dogs, her answer in verse 28 is, yes, Lord, yet even the little dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs. And I think that’s brilliant.

Yes, the puppies don’t deserve the children’s bread, but they know that if they hang around under the table long enough, some of it’s going to trickle down to them. Some of the scraps of the children’s bread are going to be there. And by saying this, she’s also acknowledging, that’s fine, I’m one of the little puppies, and I don’t deserve the bread that’s on the table, but I’m willing to take any scrap of it I can get.

So she’s acknowledging that she’s not entitled to his help. She’s not entitled to blessings and ministry and all the things that he had come to do for Israel, but she still believed that any scrap of a blessing he was willing to throw her way was going to be enough. And this is where he remarked on being impressed with her faith.

She said that, and he said, old woman, great is your faith. And because of this, he said in verses 29 and 30, for this saying, because you’ve said this, the demon has gone out of your daughter. Now what she said about the dogs and about the bread and about the scraps, they weren’t magic words.

It wasn’t a a spell that she cast and Jesus said, oh, you said all the right words in the right order. So the demon’s gone. But by her saying that she exhibited faith in him and who he was and what he came to do.

And it was because of her faith that he said, the demon has gone out of your daughter. And when she had come to her house, she found the demon gone out and her daughter lying on the bed. She found the demon gone and her daughter was there and peaceful.

And as you would expect to find her. Jesus did exactly what he said he would do. Jesus did exactly what she believed he would do.

And Jesus solved this spiritual problem she had of this demon that had hold of her daughter and was bringing chaos into her family. And the main thing we need to understand about this text is that she didn’t deserve the blessing. I mean, none of us deserve his blessings, do we?

I don’t. Sometimes I get to whining about, I don’t deserve this. And then I think about what I do deserve, and I’m pretty okay with not getting what I deserve, right?

She didn’t deserve his blessing. She wasn’t entitled to it. She wasn’t part of the covenant nation that he made promises to.

She wasn’t entitled to anything, but Jesus gave it anyway. And that, folks, is grace. And so we see this story where it sounds like Jesus is being harsh.

It sounds like Jesus is being dismissive of her. But when we understand what’s going on here, we realize it’s a picture of his grace. It’s this undeserved kindness that He shows over and over.

It’s this undeserved kindness that He shows to us because when we get right down to it, there’s not one of us who deserves His forgiveness. There’s not one of us who deserves all the kindness that He shows to us day in and day out. And if we start looking for it and we make a list of it, it’s all over the place.

If your heart is beating, that’s a blessing from God. If there’s breath in your lungs, it’s a blessing. If you have a home to go to tonight, if you have food to eat, if you have people in your life that care about you, We could go on and on and on.

They’re blessings from Him. And we don’t deserve any of them. But He gives them anyway.

It’s His grace. And He gave it to her in this case because of her faith. And it’s a reminder to us that we don’t ever earn His grace.

We don’t impress Him to get His grace. We don’t have to jump through hoops to receive His grace. We just have to believe what He says.

Particularly, we have to believe what He says about who He is. See, this is a foreshadowing of the gospel, as they will understand it later. When you and I have a spiritual problem that we cannot solve, we cannot extract ourselves from, we are separated from God, and we don’t deserve to be able to come to Him and say, would you help me with this?

We don’t deserve to come to Him at all. And yet, just out of His kindness, just because He’s good and loving and kind, He chose to give us what we didn’t deserve. He offers grace.

In this case, Jesus died on the cross to pay for our sins in full. I didn’t deserve that. And you didn’t deserve that.

He did it because He’s good and gracious and loving and kind. And the way we receive that is not by working hard, by earning it, by being better people, going to church, not even going to church on Sunday night. We receive it because we believe what He says about who He is and what He’ll do.

That when He said He died to pay for our sins and rose again to prove it, When he said it is finished, we believe that. We don’t have a plan B for our salvation. We trust completely what he said.

See, she was willing to accept scraps from the master’s table, but he’s so good and so gracious that he gave her so much more. And that’s what he does for us.

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