Episode Details

Mark chapter 7, I just want to begin by reading our text, verses 24 through 30.

And from there he 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 your way.

The demon has left your daughter.

And she went home and found the child lying in bed and the demon gone.

This passage is one that has confused

Jesus' words to this distraught mother smash to pieces our common ideas of gentle Jesus, meek and mild.

One commentator notes that we like to read when Jesus rebukes the Pharisees and the Sadducees and the scribes.

We think those religious nuts deserve it, but we are very uncomfortable with Jesus' hard words to a distraught mother, to a loving mom.

How could she deserve for Jesus to speak to her in this way?

So how do we make sense of this passage?

How do we make sense of these seemingly harsh and even insulting words of Jesus?

I think the best way to understand the text is in the light of Jesus' earthly mission.

So I'll make three statements.

This is what the whole sermon is going to consist of is three statements about Jesus' mission.

And that last one is going to involve a concluding challenge for our response to Jesus and his mission.

So statement number one, Jesus did not come in his first incarnation to be an earthly king.

Jesus did not come to be an earthly king.

Verse 24, And from there he arose and went away to the region of Tyre and Sidon.

So some pastors and theologians believe or teach that Jesus came offering himself as an earthly king to the Jews, to the people of Israel, and that it was only because they rejected him as that that he went to the cross and that all the events that precipitated from there happened.

But we just recently went through Mark chapter 6 verses 30-46 where Jesus feeds the 5,000 and in John's telling of that same story, John chapter 6 verse 15, the crowd wants to take Jesus by force right then and there and make him their earthly king.

To make him the one who's going to stand against the Romans and Jesus avoids them.

He withdraws from them and gets away from those who would make him a mere earthly king.

Here in our text, this is just a short time after that, and Jesus withdraws from the area where most of the Jews were altogether.

Tyre and Sidon is very up in the very far northwest corner of Galilee, is a predominantly Gentile populated region.

And Jesus pulls away.

It seems like he wants to rest.

He certainly wants to be alone.

Verse 24 says, He did not want anyone to know where he was.

He's pulling away.

And I think this is important for understanding our text and understanding Jesus in general.

Jesus was not trying to win any popularity contests.

Jesus was not trying to make people like him.

He wasn't even coming, first of all, to win hearts.

He came first and foremost to die so that he might save his people from their sins.

Prior to his death, his ministry consisted largely of teaching his disciples how to understand the Old Testament in light of him and in light of his coming, and ministering to the multitudes, his ministry of teaching, but also healing and casting out demons, putting his divine power and person on display.

And one of the key themes of Mark