Remember, O Yahweh
Psalm 25:6; Matthew 15:21-28
In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit.
St. Matthew 15:21-22 21 Then Jesus went out from there and departed to the region of Tyre and Sidon. 22 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!
Dear fellow redeemed in Christ our Lord… Recall the words from Psalm 25 that we chanted today in the Introit. Remember, O Yahweh, Your tender mercies and Your lovingkindnesses, for they are from of old. Let not my enemies triumph over me. God of Israel, deliver us out of all our troubles! To You, O Yahweh, I lift up my soul. O my God, I trust in You; let me not be ashamed.
Those words summarize beautifully the message in today’s Gospel, as we learn from Jesus’ interaction with the woman of Canaan. No matter what obstacles were placed before her faith – obstacles placed there even by Jesus Himself – she overcame them all and was blessed in the end. No matter how hopeless her situation seemed, she clung to her godly prayer. “Have mercy on me!” “Remember, O Yahweh, Your tender mercies and Your lovingkindnesses, for they are from of old.”
Not that Yahweh forgets. He, of course, never forgets anything. He never gets distracted. He never sleeps. He never changes His mind. And yet He teaches us to pray with the Psalmist, “Remember, O Yahweh! Remember Your tender mercies and Your lovingkindnesses, for they are from of old.” It is simply and profoundly the prayer of faith. True faith doesn’t view God as a vending machine, so that you put in a request and then expect the requested action to pop out within seconds. No, true faith comes to God in humility; true faith comes to God with a pressing need; true faith comes to God with a knowledge of His faithfulness; true faith comes to God with confidence in His mercy: it is the persistent prayer of dear children asking their dear father.
Matthew tells us that Jesus left the territory of Israel to make a little visit to the northern region of Tyre and Sidon on the northern border of Galilee. This is where Jesus grew up and spent much of His ministry. Why step outside the borders of Israel? We have no idea, except that it shows clearly that Jesus had a saving purpose also for those who were not born of Jewish blood.
A woman from that region, a non-Jew, had a daughter who was being afflicted by a demon. She heard that Jesus had come into her country, and she had obviously heard the good report about Jesus, probably because Galilee was right on the border of her country. She had to go looking for Him. Mark tells us that Jesus was trying to keep a low profile. And then she presents her urgent plea to Jesus: “Have mercy on me, O Lord, Son of David! My daughter is severely demon-possessed.”
What great things the Word alone had already accomplished in this Gentile woman! She calls Him “O Lord, Son of David!” What had she, a Gentile woman living outside of the land of Israel, to do with David, the great king of Israel who had been dead for a thousand years? What had she to do with David’s Son, the Christ, who was to sit on David’s throne as King of the Jews? Why does she believe He is merciful? And why does she believe He has power over the devil? Simply speaking, the Word of God did it all.
The Word of God told of the coming Son of David who would destroy the devil’s power. The Word of God told of a God who would be merciful and just. The Word of God told of a God who would not reign over the physical descendants of Israel alone, but who would welcome all nations into a new Israel, a people of God made up of believers from every nation. Yahweh proclaimed it through the prophet Isaiah: “There is no other God besides Me, A just God and a Savior; There is none besides Me. Look to Me, and be saved, all you ends of the earth! For I am God, and there is no other” (Is 45:21) Somehow, the woman from Canaan heard the Word about Jesus, the Son of David. And hearing, she believed. And believing, she cried out to Him for help against the devil’s hold on her daughter.
What follows in the Gospel is a testing of her faith that was as much for the disciples’ benefit and for our benefit as it was for hers. The devil, for his part, would have convinced the woman that God was not good or merciful, at least not to her. For His part, Jesus would test the woman’s faith in order to hold it up as a shining example of His power over the devil.
Jesus answered her not a word. He doesn’t get annoyed with her. He doesn’t send her away. He allows her to keep crying out for help. He just doesn’t say anything. And the devil would have the woman think that Jesus isn’t good or merciful, at least, not to her.
For their part, the disciples didn’t know what to make of Jesus’ silence. They got tired of her crying out and assumed from Jesus’ silence that He didn’t want to help her. “Send her away, for she cries out after us,” they said. But some things should not be so easily assumed. Didn’t Jesus always help everyone who came to Him for help? Didn’t the Scripture bid all the ends of the earth to look to God and be saved, as Isaiah wrote? But at the first sign that maybe Jesus wouldn’t help the woman, the disciples gave up hope and threw in the towel.
Ed or BCA or BBA, you got to take an immediate start so that sildenafil viagra amerikabulteni.com the completion is faced head on. This can lead to Male Disorder or Erectile Dysfunction. buy cialis http://amerikabulteni.com/2011/09/21/legendary-rock-group-r-e-m-have-announced-the-band-is-breaking-up/ Like this medication, if you buy Kamagra, This can offer the medicine viagra online from canada in cheap. In animal study, they observed that using two regenerative medicine tadalafil cheapest online Facts about generic viagra online techniques is going to help ED sufferers. Again, Jesus didn’t send her away. Instead, He answered, “I was not sent except to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” It sounds like a rejection, but it is just a simple statement which was generally true. Jesus was born in Israel. He conducted His entire ministry in Israel. As far as we know, this was the only time during His ministry that Jesus left the borders of Israel, and it wasn’t far beyond Israel’s borders. Of course, we know now that it was Jesus’ plan, after His death and resurrection, to send out His disciples into all the world, to preach the Gospel to every creature. But that plan was still unknown when the events of our Gospel took place. The devil would have the woman think that Jesus didn’t come for her. He wanted her to give up on Him.
But instead of going away, she came and bowed down before Him and cried, “Lord, help me!” For as hopeless as her situation appeared, the devil had been entirely unsuccessful at driving her away from Jesus. When Jesus didn’t seem willing to help, she just came closer and cried out more, as if to say, “Remember, O Yahweh, Your tender mercies and Your lovingkindnesses, for they are from of old!”
Now there is one final test. Jesus said, “It is not good to take the children’s bread and throw it to the little dogs.” He seems to say that the people of Israel are God’s children, and the Gentiles are not, and that for Him to help a Gentile would be robbing Israel of the help that was rightfully theirs. Again, the devil would have the woman think that Jesus is wicked to talk to her that way. The devil would have her think that she is not a little dog, and that God is not good, and that she should turn her back on Him.
Instead, the woman replies with childlike faith: “Yes, Lord, yet even the little dogs eat the crumbs which fall from their masters’ table.” Through the silence, through the apparent rejection, through what most would consider to be an insult, the woman’s faith remains firm like a boulder. She believed that Jesus was the Son of David, the Christ of God, and that means He doesn’t have a fixed number of times He can help people, so that if He helps one, He can’t help another. She believed that Jesus was the Christ; and since she believed that, she also believed that there was plenty of help and mercy to go around. She is content to be a little dog at her master’s table, because a crumb of His grace is more than enough to take care of her needs, and far more than she deserved.
By the power of God’s Word, this woman passed the trials of Jesus, which the devil wanted to use against her as temptations. The devil had been successful with Adam and Eve using a much lesser temptation. Remember, they lived in a beautiful garden, had no problems, and needed nothing. God had openly shown nothing but grace and favor toward them. But at the slightest suggestion from the devil that God was not good, that God wanted to keep them from the forbidden fruit because He didn’t want them to be like Him, they believed the devil! They gave up on God’s goodness when there was nothing but goodness to see.
This woman of Canaan, on the other hand, saw no sign of God’s goodness; she saw many signs that she could have taken to mean that He was against her. And yet, her faith remained in Him. That’s not a tribute to her greatness. It’s a tribute to the power of the Holy Spirit, working through the Word.
Jesus praises her faith: “O woman, great is your faith! Let it be to you as you desire. And her daughter was healed from that very hour.” In the end, we can look back and see what Jesus was doing and the good He intended, and it makes sense to us. But during the trial, when there was no grace to be seen, only faith could see through the outward appearance to find a good and loving God. Faith still looked to Jesus for good and stubbornly kept crying out, “Remember, O Lord!”
The devil’s oldest temptation is that God is not good, because He doesn’t want you to have something you deserve to have. Ever since Eden, our sinful nature exists at all times with that false belief, that God is not good, that God should behave differently than He does, that we deserve to be treated better than He treats us. Our sinful flesh doesn’t fear God, it doesn’t give Him the honor of doing as He pleases as God, it doesn’t love Him, and it doesn’t trust in Him for grace. And the devil uses every opportunity to reinforce the sinful nature’s way of thinking. Every single hardship we endure in this world, every affliction, and especially those that last a while, becomes a weapon in the devil’s arsenal to convince us that God is not good, that we should stop believing in Him, and that we should stop trusting in Him.
Our Lord Himself was taunted and tempted by the devil. “Save Yourself and us!” (Lk 23:39) “If you are the Son of God, come down from the cross!” (Mt 27:40) “Command that these stones become bread!” (Mt. 4:3) “Throw Yourself down!” (Mt 4:5) “Fall down and worship me!” (Mt 4:8) He was despised and rejected of men. He was betrayed by one of His own followers. Even His Father forsook Him. He was tortured, killed, and buried in a borrowed tomb.
None of that was evidence of God’s disapproval of the Christ. In fact, in a twisted way that the world cannot understand, it was all part of God’s elaborate and eternal plan to save us from our sins and give us free forgiveness by God-given faith and trust in this same Christ. And that is exactly what we have: forgiveness, life, and salvation because of Christ’s willing, obedient, and perfect sacrifice in our place.
And each time we gather here in this place, God once again gives us His gifts: Forgiveness of sins in the Absolution and His Supper and His preached Gospel, and a constant reminder of His calling us by name and giving us His Holy Spirit in Holy Baptism. We need no more evidence of God’s love toward us than all the promises in His holy Word and His sacramental gifts.
Through all of this world’s darkness, the Word of God calls out like a bright light: God is good! He loved the world! He gave His Son into death so that all men might live through faith in Him! He has brought you into His kingdom through Holy Baptism! But the Word of God also calls out: In this world, you will have troubles. You will not always see God’s plan, and it will sometimes appear that He won’t help.
Don’t be fooled by appearances. Trust God’s Word. And in the end, you will see that He is always good, and that it was the devil who was lying to you all along. God grant you the full truth and benefit of His Word: “Remember, O Yahweh, Your tender mercies and Your lovingkindnesses, for they are from of old. To You, O Yahweh, I lift up my soul. O my God, I trust in You; let me not be ashamed.”
In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit.
