The Canaanite Woman - Great Faith — Joel Beeke

The Canaanite Woman’s Great Faith

Matthew 15, 21. Then Jesus went out from there and departed to the region of Tyre and Sidon. 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. But he answered her not a word. And his disciples came and urged him, saying, Send her away, for she cries out after us. But he answered and said, I was not sent except to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.

Then she came and worshipped him, saying, Lord, help me. But he answered and said, It is not good to take the children's bread and throw it to the little dogs. And she said, True, Lord. Yet even the little dogs eat the crumbs which fall from their master's table.

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.

Matthew 15, verse 28. O woman, great is thy faith. Dear friends, we need the simplicity of true saving faith as we have seen in the life of Adam and Eve. We need the submissiveness of true saving faith as we have seen in the life of the Shunammite woman.

But we also need great faith, growing faith, mature faith, as we see in the life of the Canaanite woman. The subject before us this morning, growing in faith, mature faith, great faith, is a very, very important one.

And I believe the church needs this subject more than ever before. And I am burdened with it. I am burdened with it in my own life. I am burdened with it for my brethren and sisters in Christ, for my church and for the worldwide Kingdom of God.

I believe we have a major problem on our hands. We ask people how they became converted. That's well and good. That's wonderful to hear. But too often the testimony stops after the initial encounter with Jesus Christ.

And just as so many people take their husbands and wives for granted, once they walk back down the marriage church, once they walk back down the aisle after they're married and they live the way they want to live in the married state, so far too many Christians stop growing early on in their marriage relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ.

Spiritual Growth and the Problem of Backsliding

When couples come to me for marital counseling, one of the first questions I ask them is, do you really want a better marriage? And I ask them that question because many people come for help who don't want help.

They come because they want self-vindication. They come because they want to dump on you all that is wrong with their marital partner. And so if they say, yes, I really want a better marriage, I say to them, how much better?

On a scale of one to ten, what kind of a marriage do you want? Do you want a five? Do you want a seven? Do you want a ten? What are you aiming for? And if they say, I want a ten. I want an excellent marriage.

Then I say, I think we can work together. Let's work at it together. And then I ask them, on a scale of one to ten, what was the best your marriage ever was? And almost inevitably they'll say, well, it began as a ten.

And I'll say, no matter how good it was, if you really want a better marriage, you can bring it back at least to the point where it once was with God's help. So it is, friends, in spiritual life. The great problem of most Christians today is this horrible thing that God hates that we call backsliding.

That we take God for granted. That we grow stagnant. We settle on our leaves. And we don't grow in grace. And we don't fight the spiritual warfare. And we come to conferences and sermons and other events of the means of grace seeking self-vindication rather than divine growth and divine conviction.

And we are not truly desirous and yearning to grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. And we forget that there are more than 300 biblical imperatives commanding us to grow in the grace and knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ.

What would you think of a child that wasn't growing in maturity? A child of two years of age that doesn't want you, Mom, beyond her sight is a child you understand. But if that child is 12 years old and can't bear for you to leave their presence, you would say something is wrong with the growth of that child.

That child hasn't learned to trust Me. And so it is in spiritual life. We have to learn to walk by faith. And we learn to grow in faith through trials, through absences of God, through all the ups and downs of His leading providentially in our lives.

And the question I lay before you this morning is are you growing in faith? How do you grow in faith? Well, the Lord has to do that, of course. Yes, He does that by His Spirit through His Word. But we must be using the Word.

We must be begging for the presence of His Spirit. And we must be yearning for lives that grow and reflect mature faith. Mature faith is such a blessing. One mature Christian, an old minister used to say in our congregations, is worth a hundred immature Christians.

Because you see, their lives speak. And they make others jealous of their spiritual life. And they set a higher tone, a higher level of spirituality for the congregation and for other believers to emulate.

And they also help save us from that bane of easy-believism that permeates and infests the church of our day. Beside that, they also foster more fellowship in the church, don't they? When you see advanced, growing, mature Christians, they're talking about Jesus Christ.

They're communing with one another. They're growing in grace. This iron is sharpening iron. In our Dutch background, there was often in days past what they called gesellschafts, fellowships. God's people would meet together.

They'd talk together about the ways of God. They'd help each other along in their spiritual pilgrimage. And the center of their conversation would be Jesus Christ and Him crucified and Jesus Christ and Him exalted.

And oh, how we need such people today. And so this is my burden. My burden is that I'm so grateful that there are many newborn Christians. But where are the Aquilas and Priscilla's that are showing the newborns a better way?

The way to walk in Christ. The way to live soli Deo gloria and in Coram Deo. Where are those fathers and mothers in Israel? I'm speaking not just of ministers or of men, also of women. The great mothers in Israel, there have been in ages past.

Many of them have fed my soul greatly with their spirituality. Think only of the 19th century. The wonderful books that some women produced. Think of Ruth Bryan's letters or Sarah Hawkes or Mary Winslow or Ann Dutton.

These women were renowned for their godliness, for the maturity of their faith, for the profound levels of communion with God they reached. And their lives were contagious. And we can say of them as we can say of this Canaanite woman, O women, great was thy faith.

My first congregation, there was an old woman by the name of Mrs. de Bunt. She lived to be in her upper 90's. Any minister that came to town went to see her. She was so savory. Everything that dropped from her lips seemed to honor the Lord Jesus.

And when you were in her presence, you felt you were in the presence of God. She was a woman great in faith. What a support she was for a minister of the Gospel. I'll never forget coming to her on a Monday morning.

She said, how did it go for you yesterday, Pastor? And I said, well, it was the strangest thing. I said, when I began to preach, I was sweating. I couldn't do it. It was all my own work. And I said, halfway through the sermon, the Lord came.

Took it over for me. And I could hardly keep up with Him. One sentence after another was pulled from my mouth. Oh, she said, I know. I know. She said, I heard you struggling. She was at home. She was listening over the church phone.

She was too old to come to church. She said, I heard you struggling. And I turned off the church phone. And I went into a side room. And I spent the rest of the sermon praying for you, that the Spirit might descend upon you.

And she said, I knew He would come. I had contact with God. I knew He would answer my prayer. Oh, woman, great. Now, we're not going to all be like Mrs. de Bunt. But if you're a Christian, you want your faith to grow.

Don't you? Don't you want a ten relationship with the Lord? If you love Him? If you're married to Him? And why are we settling for such small levels of faith? Why are we taking our Lord for granted? Why aren't we striving for greater faith?

More maturity? Closer relationship with Him? Why aren't we putting away this world's shallow, miserable, rotten, stifling entertainment and taking up our Bibles and searching for our Savior in the Bible?

Search the Scriptures, for they are they which testify of Me. Oh, let us love our Savior. Let us seek to know Him better. And let us pray that we may be men and women of faith whose lives may be contagious.

Even if we are not great ones in the earth, even if others will now look at us and say, well, there's an unusually great person in faith, surely, even if we bring forth fruit thirtyfold rather than sixty or hundredfold, surely, we ought to be growing.

Surely, we ought to be striving to know our Savior better. Well, that's my burden. And I want to share with you. It's my burden for myself as well. And I want to share with you how God matures a person's faith from this third biblical portrait I set before you this morning.

The Canaanite woman and Jesus' dealings with her. And so our theme really this morning is the church's present need. The need for mature faith. And I want to look with you at three ways in which the Lord Jesus matures this woman's faith.

Faith Matured Through Apparent Silence

First, he does so by his apparent silence. Verse 23. But... It's the first but. He answered her not a word. Secondly, he matures her faith by his apparent rejection. Verse 24. But... Second but. He answered and said, that I am not sent, but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel.

And thirdly, he matures her faith through his apparent insult. Verse 26. But... He answered and said, it is not fitting to take the children's bread and to cast it to dogs. So the need for mature faith.

And we will see that faith matured through apparent silence, apparent rejection, and apparent insult. This is a remarkable story. If you consider how this woman came to Jesus by true faith, we'll see that momentarily.

To whom she came? To Jesus himself. Where she came? At his very feet. The urgency of her coming. She came crying out, Lord, Son of David, Lord, Son of David. Greek is in the progressive tense. Repetitive tense.

Son of David, Son of David, my daughter, my daughters, grievously vexed with the devil over and over the streets, ringing with her cries. Surely, the Lord Jesus is going to answer this beggar right away.

Don't you think? Hadn't she heard in her own land, in her own foreign land, that He hears the cries of beggars? That He heals all who are brought to Him? That He will gather little lambs in His arms and carry them in His bosom and He will answer before we call?

Surely, Jesus will be ready to answer this woman immediately and send her on her way rejoicing. But, He answered her. Not a word. What a contrast. A crying woman and a silent Jesus. What an objection.

What fodder for doubt. Didn't the people say to her before she left home, no doubt, why are you going to Jesus of Nazareth? He's the Jewish Messiah. He will have nothing to do with you, the Canaanite, the foreigner, the Syrophoenician, the outcast.

She rejects that advice. She comes to Jesus and He answers her not a word. Now you would think that this woman would return home and say, it's of no use for me to go to Jesus. And maybe some of you have done just that.

You've gone to Him in prayer and you've turned back. But this woman doesn't turn back. And why not? Because true saving faith cannot turn back from God. True saving faith must have God. God is its object.

Jesus Christ is the object and the subject. Jesus Christ is the noun and the verb and the adjective and the adverb of true saving faith and the direct object as well. He is everything. And she cannot do without Him.

Even silence won't send her away. You too have faced the silence of God, haven't you? Every true Christian who lives by faith knows at least two things in their spiritual pilgrimage. They know the presence of God, the joy of communion with God, but they also know the sorrow of a silent and an absent God.

So often as Christians we act like God is always at our fingertips. And we always have communion with Him. But if you're honest and I'm honest, there are many a time, aren't there, when we feel the silence of God.

And what a burden that silence can be. Samuel Rutherford said, the silence of Jesus Christ is the bitterest ingredient the Christian has to drink in his cup of sorrow. And elsewhere, Rutherford said, the silence of my God is hell for my soul.

Do you know that burden of silence? The burden of the bride. I awake and sought my bridegroom and went about the streets of the city saying, saw you Him whom my soul loveth. I sought Him, but could not find Him.

I called Him, but He gave me no answer. But the cry of Jeremiah, when I cry and shout, the Lord shutteth out my prayer. Thou hast covered Thyself with a cloud that our prayers should not pass through.

God comes and He puts someone of affliction upon you and you cry to Him, but the heavens are as copper and the earth is as desert and you cannot reach Him. You cannot gain hold of Him. You cannot, as the old Scottish divines used to say, pray until you pray through and lay hold of God.

You try to obey Him. You try to obey His mandate in Isaiah when He says, no man stirreth up himself to take hold of Me, but you can't take hold of Him. You can't reach Him. You cry and you shout and you sigh and you groan and you whisper, but you can't get beyond the ceiling.

It's deafening silence. Silence that multiplies the doubts within. Silence that influences you to cry out with a psalmist as we sing in our Psalter in America, with anguish as from piercing sword, reproach of bitter foes I hear, while day by day with taunting word, where is thy God?

The scoffers sneer. One day when Martin Luther left his home, he said to his dear wife, Katie, God is so silent to me, I think He's dead. And that night when he came back from work, the shades were drawn and Luther hastened his step and broke through the door and said, Katie, who died?

She said, you said this morning. God died. And God used that to break Luther's bondage that particular moment. But you see, don't you know times when it seems that God is so silent that the doubts are multiplied and you scarcely know how to believe and you scarcely know how to go on and you groan with groanings unutterable but He seems to hold Himself at bay and you wonder why.

You think of days gone by. He was so close. He was so real. He was more real than the chairs you're sitting on. And you could say the most real thing in all the world is God. But now, so far away, why does God do that?

Why is God sometimes silent to His people? That's a very good question. And of course, we don't know all the answers to that question, do we? Because we're mere finite man. God is the living, the sovereign God.

God, you see, looks at the entire puzzle, the entire fabric of our lives at any given moment. He sees all the 1 ,000 pieces of a jigsaw puzzle that make up our lives. We see only one or two pieces at a time.

And so we never know all the reasons why. And that's all right because God is God. But there are two reasons, two big pieces in that jigsaw puzzle that we do know. Two reasons that are most consistent as to why God is sometimes so strangely silent in our lives.

For the first, let me turn you to John 11. If you'll turn with me, please, to John 11. There we read that Jesus loved Martha and Mary and Lazarus. He delighted to stay in their home. You know that, of course.

And Lazarus became very sick. And they sent a messenger to Jesus. They said, Lord, verse 3, John 11, behold, he whom thou lovest is sick. Now look at verse 6. When he heard, therefore, that Lazarus was sick, Jesus abode two days still in the same place where he was.

Does that strike you as strange? If I got a call as soon as I stepped off this podium that my wife was sick unto death, I'd get on the next plane and I'd say, it was very wonderful to be here, friends, but I have to go right away.

My wife is sick unto death. I love her. And I want to be with her. And you would understand, wouldn't you? How strange. He loves her, loves Lazarus, and he stays where he is two days. Well, how would Jesus get more glory?

Through healing a sick Lazarus or through raising a dead Lazarus? And how does Jesus get more glory in our lives? Is it always by coming and answering our prayers right away? Or is it not sometimes by bringing us to our own wit's end in our prayers and even answering our prayers when they've been reduced to ashes and from out of the ashes He revives the flame of hope and faith and love and gives His answer when we least expect it.

You see, Jesus waited to get glory. That's what it says. Verse 4, this sickness is not unto death. That's not the purpose of it. That's not the end of it. But for the glory of God that the Son of God might be glorified thereby.

And so God is often silent in our lives, as John is telling us, so that God gets the glory. Now think about it this way. If God answered all your prayers right away, who would you give the glory to? We'd end in ourselves, wouldn't we?

We'd end in our prayerfulness. But God knows how to train us. He knows how to guide us. He knows how to lead us in such a way that Him that glorieth shall glory in the Lord. And that often means silence.

And through those silences God will teach us many lessons. And that brings me to the second reason. The second reason God is often silent is to mature and to refine and purify our faith. There was once a great 19th century musician and he was asked why his playing of his instrument was so popular and made so much impression.

And he said it's the pauses. It's the silences. Recently we had a well-known minister in our church who heard another minister preach. He said to me afterward the sermon was alright. He said it was good but there wasn't enough white space on the page.

Have you ever picked up a book that is written from end to end no margin. You've got to go like this to read the center and it's just it's not attractive. There's no white space. You see we function with white spaces when we read.

We function with pauses in our lives. We're wired in such a way that we need pauses. We need reflections. We need times of silence. And what God does with us in times of silence you see is He gets us to reflect and to meditate.

He brings us into dark tunnels where we give pause and consider His ways. And I can't explain how He does it. But I do know what Peter says. I do know that in dark times in our lives of silence what God is doing even as He seems to push me away with one hand He is drawing me as Peter says silently with strength in the inner soul with the other hand.

So that somehow when I come out of that tunnel of affliction and He speaks again with clarity and power in my life somehow my faith is stronger than it was when I went into the tunnel in the first place.

He refines and purifies faith through silence. I believe that I have learned more about God in my life in times of His silence than I have in the times when He hasn't been silent. In times of silence I've learned more about His sovereignty, His holiness, His majesty.

Yes, His grace too. In times of silence I've learned the wonder that I'm not destroyed. In times of silence I reflect on God and I reflect on myself. You see, our text doesn't say this morning Jesus didn't hear a word.

It said He didn't answer a word. And our problem when God is silent is we think He doesn't hear us. But He hears us. But He's waiting to be gracious. And He's guiding even our silences to our spiritual maturation and to His own glory.

And so Jesus begins to teach this woman. You see, the problem with this woman was she came to Jesus about her daughter. Have you ever noticed in the Gospels when someone came to Jesus with one of their children, Jesus always had a way of kind of arresting that person's attention, be it the father of the demoniac or be it this woman or others as well, and dealing with the parent.

You see, and when Jesus is silent, She says, My daughter is demon-possessed. Help my daughter, Lord. Jesus is silent. He's beginning to work with the woman, the mother. That's so important. I've often thought that one reason why the Lord gives us children is to deal with us.

Because where is the parent who can... Thank God, we may not have demon-possessed children, but where is the parent who can raise a child rightly? Have you ever met a single parent who says, I know how to do it.

The only parent who knows how to do it is the one who's never had a child yet. And so God empties us of ourselves in our parenting. And He gives us times of silence even in our parenting that we begin to reflect on who we are when we see the sins of our children mirroring our own weaknesses and infirmities and sins.

We learn in those silences, don't we? A great deal. God begins to deal with this woman. See, she comes with true saving faith, doesn't she? She says, Oh Lord, not Jesus of Nazareth, as she no doubt had been told that He was.

But, Oh Lord, Son of David. She comes with a Messiah title. Son of David on her lips. She has some knowledge. The Holy Spirit has taught her something of the Lord Jesus Christ and who He is. It's wonderful.

But Jesus says, I want to deal with you now, woman. I want your faith to grow. And I will begin to mature your faith through this reflective silence. But then Jesus goes on and surprisingly matures her further through, secondly, apparent rejection.

Faith Matures Through Apparent Rejection

Look at verse 23b. His disciples came and besought Him saying, Send her away, for she cries after us. What miserable disciples they were. In this case, terrible pastors. Selfish. Proud. Not discerning.

First of all, she wasn't crying after the disciples. She was crying after Jesus. They were so self-centered, they thought she was crying after them. How dreadful as ministers. How dreadfully easily we can become self-centered.

And forget who people are really crying after when they come to us for help. But what a poor example of indifference. Well, you can argue, of course, on behalf of the disciples, that Jesus and the disciples had just come from near Jerusalem where Jesus' life had been threatened.

He had managed to escape. And now they were on the northern border of Israel. And here this woman is letting the streets be filled with the noise of her crying and they're afraid that they're going to be arrested and the ministry is going to be curtailed and shut down.

Well, I suppose that's possible. But the bottom line, you see, is this. That these men are being selfish and indifferent and they don't care for this woman's soul. But my question is, why would Jesus let His own disciples treat this woman this way?

She's just a poor little babe in grace. And here she gets this rigorous treatment of rejection. Well, I'll tell you why. At least I know one piece of this jigsaw puzzle. God has to teach this woman to lose all dependency on men, even ministers, so that she may learn to live out of Jesus alone.

That's growth in grace, isn't it? Isn't that growth in faith? When I was converted, I woke my dad up in the middle of the night, 3 o 'clock in the morning, to tell him what happened. I told him the whole thing.

I told him with tears flowing. My whole heart. I unveiled everything to him. I made myself totally vulnerable to him. And my dad responded. He said, I only know of a few people in the whole church that have experiences like that and they're much older than you are.

It was like a cold shower. He didn't believe me. My own dad. You think that was hard? For two weeks, I was in great confusion of mind. And then I read a statement in some old divine that said, when we are converted often, those closest to us reject us so that we learn to lean on God alone.

And I had my answer. And I've had to learn that lesson a thousand times in my life. You see, this woman is being taught even through the rejection of the disciples. You say, that's quite obvious. I understand that.

But why does Jesus, verse 24, why does Jesus go on and seem to reject her? But, second but now, He answered and said, I am not sent, I am not sent, but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel. Isn't that mysterious?

Here's a woman crying, begging, and Jesus seems to push her away. I'm only sent to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. You're lost. You've got at least one qualification. But you're not a sheep. And you're not of the house of Israel.

So, well, how do we understand this? I think Calvin has it right. Calvin basically says something like this. Christ's priestly work, as promised seed and Savior, in whom all nations would be blessed, must be distinguished from His prophetical work during His own personal ministry, during His sojourn on earth, which was primarily confined to the Jews.

The day would come, of course, when He would suffer and die and be raised again and ascend into heaven and send forth His Spirit to break down the middle wall of partition between Jew and Gentile. And Peter and the apostles would bring the prophetical message of Jesus to all men.

But that time was not yet, you see. Calvin says this, It is as if Jesus warns her that she is acting out of turn by trying to raid the table in the middle of the supper. I am not sent, but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel.

To be rejected by people is hard. But if you're a true Christian, to be rejected by the Lord is harder. To be set outside is a tremendous problem. You remember how Rahab was set outside in Joshua 6. When they came to deliver her, we read in Joshua 6 .23 that she was left outside of the camp of Israel.

What a difficult problem. But then, two days later, two verses later, it says, She was brought in. She dwelleth in Israel even to this day. But that experience of being unworthy to be in God's presence, of being fit to be cast away, of feeling rejected, God can use that, you see, to mature faith also, so that faith casts itself in dependency upon the Lord alone.

That's what happens to this woman. Look at verse 25. You would think now she would go home. Well, she's not of the house of Israel. It's as plain as day. Woman, return to your home. No. Then, when she's rejected, then came she and worshiped Him, saying, Lord, help me.

Then she comes. She falls at His feet. This is the nature of faith, friends. Faith falls unconditionally at God's feet. Faith prays on and pleads on when it seems there is no answer and no solution. And when faith wrestles with God, it usually uses the most simple of prayers.

Sometimes our shortest and simplest prayers are our very best. Lord, help me. A two-year-old can pray that prayer. And yet, everything is in it. Notice the difference between her first prayer and her second prayer.

O Lord, Thou Son of David, my daughter is grievously vexed with the devil. Lord, help me. Something's going on, isn't it? Not one word about her daughter in the second prayer. Did she care less about her daughter?

Of course not. But now God is dealing with her, you see. And when God deals with us, friends, if we're worshiping with 1 ,200 people, it seems to us that God is speaking to me alone. And I learn to cry even in the midst of a crowd,.

Lord, help me.

I notice the Son of David is dropped. The Messiah title. Now she appeals to Him as Lord of heaven and earth. As that great high priest over all nations. O Lord... She doesn't understand all that theology.

But the principle is there nonetheless.

Lord... Are Thou not Lord of heaven and earth?

Are Thou not Lord beyond the boundaries of Israel? Help me. I like to compare this little prayer to a golden necklace. You know in a necklace, of course, how one link interlinks with another link. Well, here you've got a three-word linkage prayer.

You've got that little word, Lord, reaching up into the heavens. The Lord of lords and the King of kings reflected in Jesus. And you've got that word, me, dropping down into the hell of my own unworthiness.

And the word, help, has as a top part of its link, it links into the Lord because the Lord is our Helper in the Lord Jesus Christ. And it reaches down. Think of Samuel Rutherford again. He said, my Lord is my Helper who reaches down into the very bottom of hell.

And from the very bottom dregs of hell, He links into my soul and lifts me up. His name is help. Bunyan put it so beautifully. You remember when Christian was lifted out of the slough of Despond by a character named Help.

He's brought out of the slough. Bunyan says in the margin, Help is Jesus. Lord, help me. I cannot let Thee go, Lord. I need Thee. I must have Thee. I cannot do without Thee. So, you know what it means to pray like that.

Lord, help me. Personal. Me. Real. Urgent. Short. But with all your heart. Lord, help me. We know it was with all her heart because it says she worshipped Him. She worshipped Him. Saying, Lord, help me.

I'm sure many of you know what a beautiful word the word worship is. Proskeneo. Proskeneo comes from two words. Pros means toward. And keneo means to kiss. To kiss towards. The idea, of course, is that to worship God means that all my mind and all my affections are merged together and go out towards the object of my worship.

Her whole being is centered on Jesus. The Jesus who seems to reject her. She worships Him in the face of rejection. Lord, help me. It's as if she says, Lord, I'd rather die worshipping at Thy feet than live being away from Thee.

Give me Jesus, else I die. Do you understand that language? Lord, take anything away from me. But don't take Jesus away. I need Him. He's my Savior. He's my Lord. He's my friend. He's my kinsman. He's my elder brother.

Well, there's 280 titles and names of Christ in the Bible. And He's all of them to a believer. She worships Him. Lord, help me. You see, she's growing. She's growing in faith. Well, now you're going to say, of course the Lord is going to help her now.

No, there's one more test. One more sifting. One more purifying process as He matures her in faith. But, one more but. Verse 26, He answered and said, It is not meet, not fitting, not proper to take the children's bread and to cast it to dogs.

Faith Matures Through Apparent Insult

You say, this is worst of all. Because you know, of course, that in Bible times, most dogs were wild. And a wild dog was considered, like in America, it would be anyway, to call someone a dog is like calling someone a pig.

Pig is a term of reproach in America. I don't know what animal might be used here, but it's a very unchristian thing to do, isn't it? To call someone a pig or some other beast. And Jesus? Is this our Savior saying to this woman, it is not meet to take the children's bread and to cast it to dogs?

Whatever is Jesus doing here? Well, this woman had already faced and confronted and accepted her unworthiness, but now He's dealing with her uncleanness. He's maturing her faith. You see, when God matures our faith, one thing that faith does is it shows us that there's nothing in us.

William Grinnell put it this way, Faith is a two-handed thing. With one hand, it takes everything of what I am and it wipes it out of the way. And with the other hand, it reaches out and takes everything that Christ is and draws it to the soul.

And that's what faith is doing here for this woman. The Lord Jesus is stripping her down. She's unworthy. She's a Syrophoenician. She has no natural rights. She has no religious rights. She's a Gentile.

She has no citizenship rights. She's a Canaanite. She's unworthy. But now the Lord wants to teach her that she's an unclean and vile unworthy one. She's a sinner. A wretched sinner. The Lord wants to teach her that she is in herself but a filthy dog.

He's not aiming at cruelty here. He's maturing her faith. And how will she respond? Will she respond like Abner in the Old Testament? Am I a dog's head? And angrily walk away? Truth, Lord. I'm a dog. Luther said, she gave Christ a master stroke, ensnaring Him in His own words.