[Note: This sermon expounds Matthew 15:21–28. Delivered 15 July 1979, Montreal.]
Let us continue in our study of God's word in Matthew chapter 15, verses 21 to 28. This passage concerns the Syrophoenician woman — a Canaanite, a Gentile, in fact from the people who were marked out for extermination because of their moral corruption. And yet she is one of only two people of whom the Lord Jesus says, "Greater faith than this I have not seen, no, not in Israel." Both people to whom Jesus gives the highest commendation for their faith turn out to be Gentiles.
"Jesus went away from there and withdrew to the district of Tyre and Sidon. And behold, a Canaanite woman from that region came out and cried, 'Have mercy on me, O Lord, Son of David; my daughter is severely possessed by a demon.' But he did not answer her a word. And his disciples came and begged him, saying, 'Send her away, for she is crying after us.' Jesus answered, 'I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.' But she came and knelt before him, saying, 'Lord, help me.' And he answered, 'It is not fair to take the children's bread and throw it to the dogs.' She said, 'Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master's table.' Then Jesus answered her, 'O woman, great is your faith! Be it done for you as you desire.' And her daughter was healed instantly."
Every time I read this passage, it challenges me to the heart. Jesus does not answer her a word. How many times have you prayed, and Jesus seemed not to notice your existence? Most of us, after a silence like that, would have said: if that is how you want it, Lord, I quit. At best, you showed bad manners; you could have simply said no. But even though Jesus does not answer her, she does not leave. Then, as though to add insult to injury, when he does finally speak it is to say: it is not right to take the children's bread and give it to the dogs. After that long silence, you expected something good; instead you hear that you are among the dogs. And now, would you not have stood up in righteous indignation and said, "So you are just another narrow-minded religious bigot"? Many people say: I prayed as a child, and God never answered me — I am finished, I quit. We can sympathize. But remember one thing: you are the loser, not he.
This woman never ceases to astonish me. She is, by every human measure, a nobody. She is a woman — in Jewish law, women ranked in the same legal category as children and slaves, unable to sit with the men in the synagogue. She is a Canaanite, despised not merely as a Gentile but as someone from among the most despised people. And her daughter is demon-possessed — which, in the context of that time, suggested that someone in the family had been dabbling in spiritism, indicating a very low moral and spiritual standing. She is a nobody of this world, with nothing to commend her. And yet in God's kingdom, at the right hand of the throne, there will not be sitting some famous preacher or professor of theology — it will be this unknown woman, and the Lord Jesus himself will say of her, "Oh woman, great is thy faith." The disciples were repeatedly addressed as "O men of little faith." But of this woman: great faith. That alone tells us a great deal about the kingdom of God.
What made her faith great? Notice first the three times she addresses Jesus as Lord — in verse 22, verse 25, and verse 27. She does not come to Jesus as a faith healer or as a benefactor. She comes to him as Lord. And note that in verse 22 she calls him "Son of David" — a kingly, messianic title. She who lived near enough to Israel had learned what this title meant, and she had recognized in Jesus the king messiah. She had heard, had thought carefully about what she heard, had drawn conclusions, and on the basis of those conclusions had made a decision: this Jesus is the promised Messiah, the king, and she calls him Lord. Those are several steps of faith for a Canaanite woman with no theological training and no access to the synagogue.
The steps of her faith are instructive. First, she heard, and heard attentively. Faith comes by hearing. Second, she drew conclusions from what she heard and made a decision. She did not merely accumulate information; she acted on it. Third, she applied her faith to a specific situation. Many people have faith in their heads, but this woman was able to take her conviction — "Jesus is the messianic king, who brings salvation to the hopeless" — and apply it directly to her daughter's desperate situation. It was faith in practice, not theory. Fourth, she came near to him. Draw near to God and he will draw near to you. You cannot simply stand at a distance and pray vaguely; you must actually approach him.
Fifth, and crucially, she knelt before him. Notice at what point she knelt. Not before she received an answer — not when everything was still looking hopeful — but after she had already received no answer, after she had already been told that she was in the category of the dogs. It is after this, which would be more than most people could have stomached, that she kneels before Jesus and says simply, "Lord, help me." Three words — in Greek, only two. When you have had two rejections, it is very hard to think of very much more to say. And then comes the third rejection — the hardest of all: it is not right to take bread from children and give it to dogs. Does she argue? Does she accuse Jesus of unkindness? Her answer is simply: yes, Lord. Yes, the bread belongs to the children, it is true. But even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from the table. Oh woman, what a woman.
Where is the greatness of her faith? It does not lie simply in believing that Jesus could heal her daughter — multitudes believed that and came to be healed. The greatness lies in cleaving to the Lord. This is the key Old Testament concept that she fulfilled, almost certainly without knowing the word. In Genesis 2:24, the word "cleave" describes the husband cleaving to his wife so that the two become one. This same word is then applied in Deuteronomy to Israel's relationship with God. "You shall serve the Lord your God and cleave to him" — Deuteronomy 10:20. "Walk in all his ways, loving him and cleaving to him" — Deuteronomy 11:22. "Serve him and cleave to him" — Deuteronomy 13:4. "Loving the Lord your God, obeying his voice, and cleaving to him, for that means life to you and length of days" — Deuteronomy 30:20. And Joshua records: "You shall cleave to the Lord your God," and that one man who cleaved to the Lord put to flight a thousand — one against a thousand, and he won.
To cleave to a person means that you do not let go, whatever happens. That is what distinguishes this woman's faith from weak faith. Weak faith lets go at the first difficulty. I have seen again and again how little most faith is — at the slightest problem, people turn away from the Lord. They have never understood what it means to cleave. But this woman hung on to the Lord through three successive rejections, and would not let go. And that is what made her faith great.
# The Syrophoenician Woman's Faith — Matthew 15:21–28 (Part B) — Hezekiah, Elisha, and Ruth; Jeremiah's Waistcloth; God's Faithfulness to Those Who Cleave
[Note: This is Part B of the sermon on Matthew 15:21–28, continuing directly from Part A. Delivered 15 July 1979, Montreal.]
What kind of Christians are we making today? What the Bible requires of its people — from Israel in the Old Testament to Christians in the New Testament — is that they cleave to the Lord their God, as Ruth cleaved. No way would Ruth leave. She was a Gentile, and as we know, she became part of the messianic line — mother, grandmother, ancestor of David, all the way down to the Messiah. Because she cleaved to the Lord her God through cleaving to Naomi, saying "Your God will be my God," she became a praise, a glory, and a people for him.
In 2 Kings 18:5, we read that there was no king in Israel like Hezekiah — none before him, and none after. Why? Verse 6: because he followed the Lord, and he cleaved to the Lord all the days of his life. Hezekiah was not distinguished for particular ability or brilliance by human standards. But spiritually, the Bible gives him the highest place among all the kings of Israel, because he cleaved. And you know what happened in his reign: the mighty Assyrian army, against which no nation in the world could stand, came up against Jerusalem and demanded surrender. Hezekiah looked out from the walls and saw an army like the sand of the sea — incomparable military technique, unbeatable in battle. And what did tiny Israel do? Hezekiah cleaved to the Lord his God. Without one Israeli soldier drawing his arrow, God struck the Assyrian camp with plague. The army that had swept away every power in the known world fled in the night, leaving tents and military equipment behind them. That is what it means to cleave to God in the face of a hopeless situation. Why? Because of one man who cleaved.
And then there is Elijah and Elisha. Three times, as Elijah was about to be taken up to God, he said to Elisha: you can go now, you are released from your obligation as a disciple. Go. And three times Elisha replied: "As the Lord lives, and as you live, I shall not leave you." He took an oath. He stuck to Elijah like glue. Elijah could not get rid of him. And the result was that Elisha became that great prophet of God, succeeding Elijah and receiving a double portion of his spirit. Had Elisha not cleaved, he would never have become the man of God that he was.
There is one verse in Jeremiah that speaks to me very powerfully. In Jeremiah 13, God told Jeremiah to give a prophetic parable about a waistcloth — a garment worn wrapped around the body, fastened with a belt. God told him to bury it and then dig it up, and when he did, the waistcloth was ruined. And God said: in the same way Israel has been ruined. But then verse 11 gives the deeper meaning: "For as the waistcloth clings to the loins of a man, so I made the whole house of Israel and the whole house of Judah cling to me, says the Lord, that they might be for me a people, a name, a praise, and a glory." He wanted Israel to cling to him as a waistcloth clings to the body — inseparable. And through that cleaving they were to become his people, to carry his name, to be a praise and a glory to him. But the last sentence breaks the heart: they would not listen. They were willing to believe in God, but they did not cleave.
Now I want to address this question of believing in theory versus believing in practice. Crowds came to Jesus to be healed — they all believed in theory that he could heal. Is that great faith? No. And how many of us believe in theory today that Jesus heals, while in practice turning immediately to the doctor at any illness? I am not disparaging medicine; I am asking about your actual faith. I remember going around with a great servant of God — Yang Zijie — in China. I believed in theory that God would heal cancer, stomach ulcers, all these things. But when I saw people healed before my own eyes — cancers cured, not merely in remission; a stomach ulcer of twenty-four years disappeared overnight; the demon-possessed healed — I was so amazed that I immediately felt a sense of shame. Because if I had truly believed it in practice, I would not have been so astonished. You are not surprised by what you expect. The very fact of my astonishment showed that my belief had been theoretical only.
The greatness of the Syrophoenician woman's faith was not that she believed Jesus could heal — it was that she cleaved to him through three rejections. And notice the beautiful thing in verse 28. The Lord Jesus says to her: "O woman, great is your faith; be it done for you as you desire." The expression "O woman" — many people do not realise this — is in the Greek a title of respect and honour. It is in fact the very title by which the Lord Jesus twice addressed his own mother: in John 2:4 and John 19:26, he calls her "Woman." He who said "Who is my mother and my brother but he who does the will of God?" — he now addresses this Canaanite nobody with the same title he gives to Mary. She has done God's will. She has cleaved. And the words "be it done for you as you desire" are tremendously important. He who cleaves to the Lord will not only be victorious but will receive whatever his heart desires. John 14:14: "Whatever you ask in my name, I will do it."
Let me close with one personal example, just from the last two days. My watch — a very cheap one bought in Hong Kong in 1973 — has been gaining time at an increasing rate, and I had been thinking for two or three months about replacing it with a calculator-watch that also has a small alarm. Very practical: a calculator, a watch, and an alarm all in one. I kept looking in shop windows but never bought anything — I am exceedingly slow about purchasing things, and during several sales I was tempted by the discounts but still did not buy. And then our brother John Hirons came, and said that our sister Margaret in Macau had asked him to bring me a gift. What was it? Exactly — precisely, exactly — the calculator-watch with the alarm that I had been considering for months. Not one item different from what I had had in mind. And I could only say: Lord, your loving kindness amazes me. He looked into my heart, saw my desire, considered it a justifiable need, and granted it, through a sister in Macau who had no idea what I had been thinking. I cite this not because I follow God because he grants me calculator-watches — those are mercies that come by the way. I have had my difficult times, when I was penniless, when everyone seemed against me, when the answer seemed to be no. But I have cleaved to the Lord through those times as well. And throughout twenty-six years, not one word of his promises has failed.
I beg of you: understand the secret of great faith. It is not merely believing that God can do miracles. It is cleaving to the Lord your God when the answer seems to be no, and again no, and a third time no, and still you cling. Just as Elisha three times was told to go and three times refused — as the Lord lives, I shall not leave thee. If you have that kind of faith, you will know what spiritual victory is. You will know what it is to be God's people, a praise and a glory in this world. You will know the joy of his presence.