Matthew 15

Questions from YOU...

Anonymous said...

Why does Jesus say He was sent to only help the "lost sheep of Israel" even though He healed the Roman soldier's servant earlier?

Jennings Response: Roman's soilder was Jewish?? maybe maybe not. However Jesus main focus was God's chosen people the Jews. He was the messiah to the Jews first but the Gentiles salvation was to be part of his legacy. It was not yet time for the Gentiles to be reached until later. We see this later in the New Testament with Paul. In fact Paul and Peter actually get into an argument over the issue in Acts! Jesus may have also been testing her faith. Testing her heart? See below for more...

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Chapter 15 deals with issues of Clean and Unclean. Remember that the Hebrew law had many things that were considered unclean. Here we see Jesus getting back to the theme of the heart. What comes out of the mouth/ from your heart is more important to cleanliness than what you are eating. In verse 16 we see some bathroom humor from Jesus! The heart really does lead to the evils of this world. A good reminder to think about what is in our heart.

It is interesting that Matthew puts the story of a Gentile woman next to this unclean clean passage. The Gentiles were not allowed to even be touched if you were Jewish or you would be unclean. Perhaps Jesus in another way is pointing out what was important about her. Which would be her faith! Notice too that Jesus allows for her to cry out until it gets on the disciples nerves and they tell Jesus to get rid of her. Perhaps Jesus is making a point here. He basically says exactly what his disciples wanted to say to her by calling her a dog. You see Jesus knows her heart and knows her faith and when she shows it Jesus is able to pull a 360 on his disciples and challenge them by showing that an "unclean" Canaanite woman was worthy because of her faith. -- That's my opinion of the scenario. Jesus was great at these 360 perspective teaching moments. He did an amazing job of taking advantage of the teachable moments in life. I would encourage you to look for more of these as you read and also be aware of them in your own life. A relationship with Christ produces these all of the time!!!