Great is Thy Faith Heb11:1 CLICK TITLE FOR AUDIO
A gentile woman of Canaan came to Jesus asking him to cast a devil out of her daughter. Of her he said, Great is thy faith. What was it that was so great about her faith and how did she, as a gentile, convince Jesus to heal her daughter? By faith, she knew exactly who he was and she knew exactly what he could do and why. By faith:
She knew that Jesus was the Messiah – she was from the area of Tyre and Sidon – she had already heard of his great miracles that he performed for people from that region [Mk 3:8-11]; even the devils had cried that he was the Son of God – when she approached him she called him “Lord, thou Son of David” – she knew the truth about him that even the Pharisees didn’t know [Matt 22:41-46].
She knew that Jesus could cast the devil out of her daughter – she knew that he was powerful enough to do it – however, Jesus put a limitation on her – he had only come for the lost sheep of the house of Israel – that didn’t stop her, she said, “Lord, help me.” To which Jesus replied, “It is not meet to take the children’s bread, and to cast it to dogs.” Do you understand the context of that statement concerning bread? Jesus had just miraculously fed bread to 5,000 men besides women and children [Matt 14:15-21] – when those folks whom Jesus fed returned the next day for more bread [at Capernaum, which is just south of the border of Tyre and Sidon, Jn 6:22-26], Jesus explained to them that he was the bread of life [Jn 6:35, 47-48] and that they had to eat him to have eternal life [Jn 6:51-63].
She knew why Jesus would heal her daughter – many of those who returned for physical bread were offended by Jesus’ reply and “went back, and walked no more with him” [Jn 6:66] – they had left some of “the bread of life” for others to eat. So the woman responded to Jesus’ limitation by saying, “the dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their masters’ table” – in other words, because some of the lost sheep of the house of Israel had turned back from following the Lord, there were some crumbs for her to eat!! And eat she did!! “Her daughter was made whole from that very hour,” [Matt 15:28].
Conclusion: we are the gentile dogs that have gotten the bread of life because the Jews turned it down – there are some other dogs just like us who would take of the bread of life – we just need to go tell them – like a friend of mine said, “I’m just a beggar telling another beggar where I found bread!”