This is a sermon on Mark 7:24-37.
For those of you who don’t know me, my name is Penny, and I’m the senior pastor here, and it is great to be with you. We’re glad that you would join us, and we are thankful that we can come, and we can come to God’s Word, and we can read His Word, and we can pray to Him, and sing, and dine at His table. So it is good for us to be here.
And so whether this is your first Sunday, or your 101st, whether you have walked with the Lord for decades, or maybe you’re new to Christianity, we are glad that you would join us. Because the truth is, is that regardless of what you might bring this morning, what it is that you’ve experienced this past week, we all have something in common. And the thing that we all have in common is that we are all in need.
We are all in need of grace, and mercy, forgiveness, and love. And that is true of me, and it’s absolutely true of you, that this is what we are in need of. And the love, and grace, and mercy that we’re in need of comes only through Jesus.
And that’s what we’ve been hearing as we’ve been going through the book of Mark. So as we’ve been going through this book for the last number of weeks, that is a theme that has come up again and again, right? That the people that Jesus is engaging with, and the people that He’s talking with, and we ourselves, that we need His forgiveness. We need His grace.
And that’s what we’re going to see again this morning in Mark 7. So if you have a Bible, I encourage you to turn to Mark 7. If you don’t have a Bible, there are Bibles in the chairs in front of you, or you can follow along on the screens in just a moment. We’ll be projecting the passage there. And if you don’t have a Bible, if you came here and you don’t own one, we would love for you to take that one in the chair.
It’s yours. It’s our gift to you. We would love for you to have it.
But in Mark’s gospel, beginning in verse 27 of chapter 4, we read this. And from there He, that being Jesus, arose and went away to the region of Tyre and Sidon. And He entered a house and did not want anyone to know, yet He could not be hidden.
But immediately a woman, whose little daughter had an unclean spirit, heard of Him and came and fell down at His feet. Now the woman was a Gentile, a Syrophoenician by birth, and she begged Him to cast the demon out of her daughter. And He said to her, let the children be fed first, for it is not right to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.
But she answered Him, Yes, Lord. Yet even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs. And He said to her, for this statement, you may go away.
You may go your way. The demon has left your daughter. And she went home and found the child lying in bed and the demon gone.
Then He returned from the region of Tyre and went through Sidon to the Sea of Galilee in the region of the Decapolis. And they brought to Him a man who was deaf and had a speech impediment. And they begged Him to lay His hand on him.
And taking Him aside from the crowd privately, He put His fingers into His ears and after spitting, touched His tongue. And looking up to heaven, He sighed and said to Him, Ephphatha, that is, be opened. And His ears were opened, His tongue was released, and He spoke plainly.
And Jesus charged them to tell no one. But the more He charged them, the more zealously they proclaimed it. And they were astonished beyond measure, saying, He has done all things well.
He even makes the deaf hear and the mute speak.” Friends, this is the Word of the Lord. Let me pray for us. Heavenly Father, thank You for Your Word.
We ask that now as we come to it, that You would unstop our ears, that You would open our eyes, and in a few moments, You would loosen our lips to give You praise. And so we pray, Lord, that You would show us the beauty of Your gospel, that we would hear the grace of Your Son, and that that would motivate us to walk with You faithfully. And so help us now, we pray, as we come to Your Word.
We pray this in Christ’s name. Amen. So I’m sure all of us have heard the name Alexander the Great before.
Alexander the Great, right? One of the greatest and most powerful military leaders in the history of the world. Alexander the Great, he was one who was a brilliant tactician. He was also vicious with regard to his military strength.
He at one point controlled what was then pretty much the entire known world. He took lands and cities. He gained great deals of wealth.
He ruled with authority and power. This is who Alexander was. He was mighty and powerful.
He was also vicious and ruthless. Well, there’s a story told of Alexander that at some point as he ascended into power, as he gained great strength, that he went to his generals and he told them, if you are ever in need, you or your family, come to me. Come and ask me for help.
Now, I want you to think about that, right? If the most powerful, the most wealthy person in the known world came to you and said, anytime you have need, anytime that your family has trouble, whatever it might be, just come to me. That sounds like a pretty good offer, doesn’t it? Wouldn’t we want to cash in on that bill, right? To be able to come to this person and say, this is my need and have him satisfied, that sounds pretty good. It’s an incredible offer.
If you’re in a bind, in a need, just go to him. He makes this offer to his generals and one of his generals takes him up on it. One of his generals goes to his treasurer, Alexander’s treasurer, and says, well, you know that the agreement that Alexander made with us, the offer he made to us, and so I want to cash it in. I would like a sum of money to help pay for my daughter’s wedding.
Now, to our ears, that might not sound like that big of a deal, but the treasurer actually responded with shock and surprise because he realized the amount of money that the general was requesting wouldn’t just pay for the wedding, but it would set up the daughter for life. So what do you think about the general? I mean, let’s set aside Alexander’s response for a moment, but what do you think about this general? I mean, on the one hand, he’s very bold, right? He’s maybe a little audacious.
I mean, maybe he grew up in poverty and so he has concern for his daughter. Maybe he’s worried that she, too, would fall into poverty, and so I’m going to ask for this sum of money to care for her, to help her, right? I mean, he’s making a request to everyone’s ears would have just sounded ridiculous, but he’s making this request for the good of his child, for the good of his daughter. He goes to the very person that can actually help him in this time of need, and he goes on behalf of his daughter, and that’s what we see this woman in our passage doing.
1. Approaching Jesus
In our passage, we have a mother, not a father, approaching not the king of the then-known world, but the king of kings, the king of the universe, and she’s approaching this king on behalf of her daughter, not for a wedding, but for a healing, right? That’s what we see in our passage. Jesus has gone off into a Gentile region, Tyre and Sidon, and he goes to this house to get away. You remember a few weeks ago, he promised his disciples, let’s go to the other side of the lake, we’ll have a little retreat, we’ll get away, we’ll have some time to ourselves, but that didn’t work out, remember? The crowd showed up, they interrupted their retreat, so now, you know, Jesus goes into a Gentile area, and so maybe now they’ll get at least a meal to themselves, but that doesn’t happen either, right? As soon as he sits down, we have this woman, a Syrophoenician woman, a Gentile who approaches him.
She’s a Gentile. She’s not Jewish. She hasn’t been given the promises of God.
She is outside of God’s people, and she approaches Jesus, and we’re told in verse 25, she fell down at his feet, and in verse 26, she begged him to cast the demon out of her daughter. She begged. Now, the form of that verb, beg, it has the implication that this isn’t a single request, but it’s continuous.
It’s ongoing. She’s begging over and over and over again. In fact, in Matthew’s gospel account, in his account of this situation, Matthew says that the woman was begging so much that the disciples asked Jesus to quiet her down and send her on her way, but Jesus doesn’t send her on her way.
She approaches and falls and begs because she knows that no one else can help. Jesus doesn’t send her away. Instead, Jesus says to her in 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.
Okay, I have to tell you, this is not what we would expect Jesus to say, is it? I mean, from all that we know about Jesus as we’ve been going through the book of Mark, or even if you haven’t been with us, even if you’ve never read the Bible, you have heard something about Jesus, and I bet what you have heard about Jesus is that Jesus is caring, that he’s loving, that he’s kind, that he’s gracious, that he’s compassionate, right? These are the things that we know about Jesus, and so when we have this woman coming and begging, pleading for her daughter, what would we expect Jesus to say to her? Sweetie, don’t be afraid. It’s all going to be fine. We expect that maybe he would put his hand on her shoulder, or maybe take her face in his hands, and look into her eyes, and with great compassion enter into her fear and worry, right? That’s what we would expect about Jesus.
But he says this instead. It seems so out of character, doesn’t it? It seems so out of character. It seems like Jesus is casting her aside and calling her a dog.
So, what is going on? Well, the first thing we need to note is that Jesus is using a metaphor here. It’s actually a parabolic statement, so it’s a mini parable that he’s doing here, he’s using. And this metaphor is to have a family meal, and that family meal, you feed your children, and then you care for your pet, right? That’s what you do.
And so, in the metaphor, the children are the people of God, are Israel. They’re the ones that have the promises. They’re the ones that Jesus came to.
In fact, in Matthew’s account, Jesus makes it explicit that he came for the lost sheep of Israel. So, what Jesus is doing is he’s saying there’s an order to his ministry. I come to the Jews first, and then to the Gentiles, then to the nations.
And what’s amazing is that this woman understands the parable. She understands the metaphor. In fact, commentators point out that she is the first person in Mark’s gospel to understand a parable of Jesus without him instructing them, which is pretty interesting because she’s a Gentile woman.
And she responds, yes, Lord, yet even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs. So, you hear what she’s doing? Not only does she understand the metaphor, but she takes it on herself. She takes the implications of the metaphor upon herself.
You see, Jews call Gentiles dogs. Now, in our context, right, many of you have dogs. I know you do.
We don’t have dogs. I’m allergic. One of my children’s allergic, so we’ll never have dogs.
But some of you have dogs, and your dog is part of your family, right? Your dog is special. Your dog is cared for. Your dog probably eats better than you do, right? This is what we do with our dogs in our culture, and rightfully so, right? They’re wonderful animals.
They’re faithful, right? They’re man’s best friend, all these sorts of things. Way better than cats, right? So, I’m just kidding. We’re not getting into a debate over that, okay? We’re about unity here.
So, anyway, but that’s what dogs are, right? We care for them. We love them. They sit in our laps.
We stroke them. We groom them. We bathe them.
When they get sick, we take them to the vet. This is what we do. So, to call someone a dog, a puppy, a faithful friend, right, we might actually be saying you’re part of the family, but that’s not what they were saying back then.
Because to call someone a dog back then, it was to disparage them. It was to put them down. It was to despise them.
That’s why the Jews called Gentiles dogs, and this woman knew that, and she understands this, and she knows that she’s an outsider, a Gentile. In the eyes of the Jewish people, she is a dog. And so, when she takes this metaphor upon herself and says even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs, what she is acknowledging is that she has no standing before Jesus.
You see, when Jesus used the metaphor, she didn’t respond. How dare you call me that? She didn’t say, don’t you know who I am or what I’ve done or who my family is or the kind of standing I have in my community? You’re not from here. You don’t know my family.
Like, she doesn’t do any of that, does she? She doesn’t get defensive, right? She doesn’t make her case, because she knows she has no case to make. She knows she doesn’t deserve the help that she’s asking. She has nothing to offer.
When she comes and approaches Jesus, she is only claiming her need and Christ’s goodness, and that’s it. She is saying, I am unworthy. I am undeserving.
I am a dog. Help me nonetheless. Help me because I am unworthy.
That is how she approached Jesus, and that’s how we’re to approach him. We approach Jesus not claiming our own strength or our intellect or our understanding or our worthiness. No, we have nothing to claim.
There was a 17th century writer who, for the life of me, I can’t remember who he was, which writer it was, but he said, know yourselves and be prayerless if you can. In other words, when we know ourselves and we know our need, we have to go to Jesus. We have to approach him like this woman did.
That’s what she does. She approaches the king asking for help, and so what does she receive? Let’s go back to the general. The general has asked the treasurer for this incredible amount of money, and so the treasurer, assuming Alexander is going to say no to it, he still has to go to Alexander and make this request.
The treasurer does, and he makes the request to Alexander, and he expects surely that Alexander will laugh it off or he’ll brush it off or he’ll explode in anger because, right, he’s a tyrant. But Alexander hears the request, and he thinks about it, and he says to the treasurer, give it to him. And seeing the shock and the surprise in the face of the treasurer, he goes on and says, pay him.
By asking for such a sum, he pays me a great compliment. He believes that I am both rich and generous. He believes that I am both rich and generous.
You see, in the man’s need, Alexander helped, and that’s what Jesus does for this woman. She approaches and begs and claims nothing of herself, heal my daughter. She approached believing that Jesus was both powerful and good, that he was able to heal, and he does.
2. Receiving from Jesus
The woman approaches Jesus, and she receives mercy, and her daughter receives healing. That’s what we see in verses 29 through 30. Jesus said to her, for this statement, you may go your way.
The demon has left your daughter, and she went home and found the child lying in bed, and the demon gone. You see, what this girl, what this woman received was Christ’s mercy. But it’s not just this girl and this woman who received from Jesus.
We see in verses 31 through 37 that a man receives help as well, right? So Jesus leaves the region of Tyre and Sidon, and he goes to the area of Galilee, and there, there’s a man that’s brought to him who is deaf and can’t speak. And the people who bring this man, they bring him begging, right? Like the mother. They too are begging Jesus, begging Jesus to bring healing.
And so Jesus takes the man over to the side, and he puts his fingers in his ears, and he spits and touches his tongue, and he sighs and looks up to heaven and says, Ephetha, be opened. And the man is healed. Now, why did Jesus go through all that? Have you ever thought about that? Like if you’ve read this passage before as we’re reading it, like have you ever thought like, why all the theatrics? Like why all the drama? Because he didn’t have to do those things to heal someone, right? Jesus is healed just by saying a word before.
He’s healed people who weren’t even in his presence, right? We just saw that a few verses before with this girl. Jesus didn’t say to the woman, okay, I’ll heal her, but I gotta go into the room, I gotta get down beside her, I gotta put my hands on her. Then he doesn’t do any of that, right? He never even saw the girl, and she is healed.
And so why does Jesus do all this? Well, I think what Jesus is doing by going through all these theatrics, all this drama, is relating to the man in his condition. He’s entering into the condition of the man and empathizing with him. Kent Hughes put it this way.
He said that Jesus is accommodating to the situation so that attention is on him as the instrument and source of healing. You see, through touch and through this sigh, Jesus is entering into the man’s world. I mean, think about it, right? This man is deaf, and so Jesus could stand in front of this man and he could say all sorts of words, and the man would have no idea what he was saying.
He was deaf, right? And so when Jesus puts his fingers in his ears, and he spits and touches his tongue, the implication is he spit on his fingers, right? He licked his finger, he spit on his fingers, and then touched the man’s tongue, and he breathes and sighs deeply, and he looks up to heaven. What he’s basically doing is what some commentators have noted. He’s giving sign language.
He’s communicating to this man in a way that this man would understand. He is entering into the man’s condition and empathizing with him, and he looks up to heaven to indicate that what’s about to happen, it’s not magic, but is the gift of God. The man couldn’t hear, but he could see, and he could experience, and he could feel.
And Jesus says, be opened, and his ears were opened, his tongue was released, and he spoke plainly. When Jesus enters into his condition, he releases him. He releases him and makes him able to hear.
He heals him and is merciful and gracious. That’s what Christ does. In Isaiah chapter 53, we’re told that there is a promise made that when the Messiah would come, when the King arrives, that 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 sing for joy. And that’s what we see in this passage, right? That’s what’s taking place. The deaf and the mute and the oppressed, they’re healed and they receive mercy, and they are healed and receive mercy because the Messiah has come.
Because the King who heals is the King who is before them. He comes to those who are in need, to the demon-possessed girl, and to the deaf man, and to people like us, people like you and me. Yes, we may not be afflicted by a demon or hindered by disability, but because of our sin, because of our condition, we’re in need.
As I said earlier, we are in need of grace and mercy, and it’s the grace and mercy that only comes through Christ. So you see, friends, just as Jesus entered in and identified with this man when he touched his ears and his tongue and he groaned and looked up to heaven, Jesus identifies with us as well. For when Christ went to the cross, he was taking our condition upon himself.
You see, the scriptures are clear that Jesus was one who knew no sin, and yet this one who knew no sin took our sin upon himself so that we might become the righteousness of God, so that we would receive mercy and grace, so that we would have help in our time of need. And so what we are to do with this, how we are to respond, is that we are to approach him in our need. We are to approach him recognizing our need.
We are to approach Jesus confessing our sin, the fact that we have fallen short. We approach him claiming only his righteousness. We approach him and we find the one who is rich and generous, who forgives and is merciful.
We approach him and confess our sin, our need, and we receive his grace. Friends, that’s what the woman found. That’s what his her daughter found.
That’s what the deaf man found. And when all this took place, what did the people do? They couldn’t stop talking about it, right? He said, be quiet, and they couldn’t, right? Because why? He has done all things well. He makes the deaf hear and the mute speak, and he is forgiving sinners like me and like you.
That’s what he does. And because he does that, we approach him, and we find help in our need. Amen.
Let’s pray. Heavenly Father, we do thank you. Thank you that Jesus has entered into this world, and that he understands our condition, and he has taken our sin upon himself, so that we would find grace and forgiveness, mercy and care, so that we too would be healed.
And so we pray, Lord, that we, as your people who have had our eyes opened and our ears unplugged, our hearts softened and our minds enlightened, that we would not stop talking about what Christ has done, that we would give him the glory for what he has accomplished, and that we would give him the praise as the king who brings healing, the king who meets us in our need. And so, Father, fill our mouths with praise, even now, as we continue to worship you. And we pray all this in Christ’s name, and God’s people said together, Amen.