Well, if you're visiting, we are working through the Gospel of Matthew, and today we come to Matthew chapter 15. Last time we looked at the faith of the Canaanite woman. As far as I know, that's the only time in the Bible, in the New Testament, that that phrase is used, a Canaanite. So it was Matthew was directly playing off the long history of Israel. These were the people, remember, who were to be exterminated from the land, and here the Lord is saving them. So really amazing! Today we're looking at Matthew 15, and we'll begin at verse 29 to the end of the chapter. This is the Word of the Lord, found on page 976.
"Jesus went on from there and walked beside the Sea of Galilee, and he went up on the mountain and sat down there. And great crowds came to him, bringing with them the lame, the blind, the crippled, the mute, and many others, and they put them at his feet, and he healed them, so that the crowd wondered when they saw the mute speaking, the crippled healthy, the lame walking, and the blind seeing. And they glorified the God of Israel. Then Jesus called his disciples to him and said, i have compassion on the crowd because they have been with me now three days and have nothing to eat, and I am unwilling to send them away hungry, lest they faint on the way And the disciples said to him, where are we to get enough bread in such a desolate place to feed so great a crowd And Jesus said to them, how many loaves do you have They said, seven and a few small fish And directing the crowd to sit down on the ground, he took the seven loaves and the fish, and having given thanks, he broke them and gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the crowds. And they all ate and were satisfied, and they took up seven baskets of the broken pieces left over. Those who ate were four thousand men, besides women and children. And after sending away the crowds, he got into the boat and went to the region of magadon
I want to read just a bit further. "And the Pharisees and Sadducees came, and to test him, they asked him to show a sign from heaven. He answered, when it is evening, you say it will be fair weather, for the sky is red, and in the morning it will be a stormy, stormy today, for the sky is red and threatening. You know how to interpret the appearance of the sky, but you cannot interpret the signs of the times. An evil adulterous generation seeks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of jonah
I want you to skip down to verse um eight verse seven. "And they began discussing it among themselves, saying, we brought no bread But Jesus, aware of this, said, oh you of little faith! Why are you discussing among yourselves the fact that we that you have no bread? Do you not yet perceive? Do you not remember the five loaves for the five thousand, and how many baskets you gathered? Or the seven loaves for the four thousand, and how many baskets you gathered? How is it that you fail to understand that I did not speak about bread? Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and the sadducees Then they understood that he did not tell them to beware of the leaven of the bread, but of the teaching of the Pharisees and Sadducees."
There will end today the reading of God's Word.
Well, we have been studying in the Gospel of Matthew Christ's sort of relentless determination to fulfill the very purpose that he came to this earth. This is so wonderful to study the Gospels and to meet our Savior. It really is opening up for us something beautiful about him. But at the beginning of Matthew, you remember the programmatic statement: that "You shall give him the name Jesus, for he shall save his people from their sins." This is as he's going out and delivering and doing all this healing we can't miss that this was the great purpose of the mission. The issue was sin. Matthew, of course, addresses this and is helping us to understand who his people are. That's really important for the Gospel of Matthew.
When the Canaanite woman came, and he owed nothing to Canaanites! nothing to canaanites When the Canaanite woman came seeking Christ's help, he said something shocking, didn't he? "I was only sent to the lost sheep of the house of Israel." And yet by the time the account ended, her faith was so commended after she was pushed and prodded after he tested that faith to show what kind of faith it was that she received mercy and became a child of God.
So something's happening in Matthew. Something important is happening in Matthew, and that is unfolding for us today. It's beautiful. It's absolutely beautiful. I want you to see this: it's that Jesus now has, predominantly, so far at least as we see the shift in the passage since chapter 15 the beginning, he now has predominantly Gentiles coming to him. And he's showing great compassion to unclean Gentiles. That should be, of course, one of the most comforting truths and encouraging sections for us to understand because Jesus is essentially training his disciples for future ministry here. that There's so much of this that's discipleship on-site training that's going on in Matthew, and that's important for us. We'll see why in a minute. But maybe you're accustomed to hearing this: that Jesus's compassion is for all peoples. That should be a shock in some ways to us at least for the Jews to understand maybe not in light of the whole Testament and the promise to Abraham, but as it's playing out, Jesus coming as the Savior of Israel? who's the israel Well, that's been a big question in history, hasn't it?
Matthew's Gospel is showing us something powerful here. It's showing us the character of our Lord. What is he like? It's showing us the extent of his great compassion Something he was teaching and preparing the disciples for in the Great Commission, which means that he's teaching us about something with that regard. We need this passage. I needed this passage. In fact, I looked at it and thought, "Oh, how do I preach again a second feeding event that's almost verbatim like the other one? Why would the Gospels do that? Why would Matthew want that here?" And I want this morning to look at this so that we have the same sort of response as this Canaanite woman.
Because Matthew is teaching us something about the true Israel of God. The broader theme running through this chapter and that's why I read into chapter 16 that i don't want you to miss is this theme of bread that keeps coming up. The whole thing started with the Pharisees criticizing Jesus and his disciples for not washing their hands properly when they ate bread, breaking, effectively, the tradition of the elders. And we're going to see as this unfolds we looked at last time the woman wants the bread crumbs, the leftovers that's a theme, isn't it? And then today he feeds again uh four thousand and then he ends by saying, "Watch out for the bread!" 11 of the Pharisees. So clearly something's important going on in this whole section. And that's why I really don't appreciate chapter breaks anymore. They do not help you. Just just keep reading. Okay? hope I've taught you that.
We've run up against the problem in Matthew's Gospel of an external religion only an approach to God that bypasses the need of a cleansed heart. We've studied, sort of front and center, how Christ leveled the playing field by saying and confronting this external only religion of the Pharisees. When he says, "Not what goes into a man that defiles him not wash it's not about washing hands properly that's not what's cleansing you before God. Your problem is what's coming out of your hearts, and that's defiling everybody. You know what's coming out of there? Murder, adultery, sexual immorality, fornication, thefts, false witness, blasphemies." That is what is defiling all of you. That's a leveled playing field. It doesn't matter how precise you keep the tradition. It doesn't matter really how studiously you try to keep all the fine points of the law. If that problem's not dealt with. An unclean heart.
And, you know, I said we've complained about Phariseeism all these years. We like to beat up on the Pharisees, but it's us. If we could just have a system of our own righteousness to achieve and beat everyone with that system, it makes us feel better, and then we get a way around the law of God itself. That's why legalism and antinomianism we've been looking at. Well, Christ showcased this last time with a Canaanite woman. She was relentless in her pursuit of Christ right after this ugly mess. And what's shocking about her is, and by the way, I didn't really build on this last week, but she not only was a Canaanite, but she was a woman. Women in this culture were not treated very well.
Who's he coming to? Who's coming to him? Everything the Pharisee said, he's tearing it all down. She had faith. She believed. She believed in the Lord, the Son of David. She had doctrine. She had knowledge of him. And by the time it was over, her daughter was healed. And by the way, just to add another little tidbit here: it was probably her fault her daughter was sick. As a Canaanite, they were into all kind of occult, demonic stuff. She had great guilt. She was into the cult. She was into this kind of stuff. And it affected her daughter. I mean, that's just basic Canaanite religion. what they worshipped and what they did. These are the people who dashed their kids against stones.
Well, all these sicknesses and all these people with deep need are teaching us something about a greater spiritual need, aren't they? By faith you can be cleansed faith alone that's what we saw today cleansed hearts. Well, the crucial point that was made last time was that upon the rejection of the leaders of Israel, right, the Pharisees, the pastors in Israel, Jesus departs for Tyre and Sidon, a predominantly Gentile Canaanite region, if you will. We are in Canaanite region, and it's almost ironic because they criticized him for not keeping the standard of ritual purity. He then immediately moves to these people who were the absolutely unclean.
See what we have today? is the sign that anyone in Israel should have witnessed immediately. But this time, consider where the sign is done. Let's jump into this for a minute. We read in verse 29 that Jesus went on from there and walked by the Sea of Galilee, and he went up on a mountain and sat down there. So he goes into this densely populated region, and we read that in this densely populated region, huge crowds came to him. These were the crowds that had come a long way earlier from what was known as the Decapolis, which was a region of 10 Hellenistic cities. So on the eastern frontier of the Roman Empire. So he's in Canaanite land, and I don't think we get a sense of how big the crowds were. Masses of crowds were coming to him. of the unclean almost all gentiles bringing to the him notice this all the sick the handicapped. You'll notice what did I title my message? I think I titled it on that point, didn't I? "Jesus for the Handicapped"? I was awake in my study, I guess, so I figured it out. The blind, the crippled, the mute, and they put him at his feet.
Now, you know, when they criticized Jesus for hand washing it was about ritual uncleanness because of contact with Gentiles. If you brush up against a Gentile, you are defiled, and that was the whole issue. Now all of these people are the unclean coming to Jesus. Imagine this just with me for a minute. Imagine collecting all these people in Escondido that you pass by. Escondido's filled with them. Let me try to capture the offense of this. What what part of Escondido do you avoid? Well, I doubt I see you many of you down there by the bus stop late at night. Jesus would challenge us. Jesus would challenge us. Because any form of self-righteousness or external righteousness, he would combat, he would confront.
This would be like Christ leading here, right here, and upon facing criticism for breaking the tradition of the elders, he heads down to the bus stop in Escondido. And you hear on the news: all the prostitutes, the drug addicts, the people who've wrecked their lives are all coming to Jesus. He's where? I like to notice the list here. The blind can't even see to get there, can they? The crippled can't walk to get there. The mute can't even hear him, right? And many others. And Christ shows compassion on them. "Oh no, these are the people stinking up the streets."
Mine, this is like Mark 2, when they brought the paralytic, lowering him down on the mat, and Jesus looks at them and sees their faith and says, "Son, your sins are forgiven." It's really, this passage, an extension of what we see with the Canaanite woman. Something's happening. Something's happening. You'll notice it's the same thing. They won't leave him.
The canada woman was remarkable. She just wouldn't take no. She could be called a dog. She didn't get offended. She was a in Israel's terms a dog. an unclean dog she's called a dog She doesn't get offended. "I need the crumbs. You can call me a dog. That gives me hope. I'm not leaving you." It's the same thing the crowds won't leave him. These crowds will not leave him, even when they're hungry and they they miss dinner and they've missed food all day. It's beautiful. You remember the principle, right? There's a principle in the New Testament: the Gospel first to the Jew and then to the Greek. When Israel rejected it, the Lord said, "Go to the Gentiles." Paul said that, remember? In Acts: "But since you reject it and do not consider yourselves worthy of eternal life, we will leave you and go to the Gentiles." I think they got that right here. I think they studied the mission of Christ.
It's a principle taught everywhere. Just listen to the parable, and you'll hear it: "The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a great feast for his son, and he sent his servants to call those who were invited to the wedding feast, but they wouldn't come. Again, he sent to other servants saying, tell those who were invited: See, I've prepared my dinner, my oxen and my fat calves, and everything's been slaughtered. Everything's ready. This is going to be a great feast tonight. I've i've made the best rib eyes. Come, come to the wedding feast But they paid no attention, and they went off one to his farm, another to his business while the rest seized his servants and treated them shamefully and killed them. The king was furious. He sent his troops and destroyed those murderers and burned their city. Then he said to his servants, the wedding feast is ready, but those who were invited were not worthy. Go therefore to the main roads and invite to the wedding feast as many as you find And those servants went out to the roads, and they gathered all whom they found both bad and good."
Who was invited? Luke tells us: "When you give a feast, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind." Why? See, the whole ministry of Jesus challenged the righteous. I had one of you say to me in our study of the the jews I think you know it's one of the dangers i saw in myself for so many years. When you have all of the privilege of being raised in the covenant, we're very much like them, you know? Baptism and and covenant and Christian school and Christian home and christian this and how how easily how he how easily you can have all this. Now, now hear me, and we've never put down the knee. Remember what the Canaanite woman said? "Lord, help me. Oh, I need that."
External privileges are wonderful, but they lead us somewhere, don't they? And the Gospels keep showing us this. The Gospels keep showing us this, because this is the barrier we erect for ourselves so that we don't come to him. "Lord, help me" was the Canaanite woman. "I need your help."
Well, what is my problem? I look together, don't I? Not really. None of us are really that much together, are we? Or are we just showing that I'm kind of lame, pun intended. You guys didn't get that? I'm lame. But I am lame, and I am blind, and I am crippled. It's a hard thing for me to see it. All of these physically incapable people are showcased to us for a reason. They're us. They're us. And what does Christ do here? He heals them. Okay, so that when they saw all these people made well this is a big moment. Now notice they glorified the God of Israel. Who? The Gentiles glorified the God of Israel. That's a beautiful passage. That that is such a moment here in the Gospels. As one author said, "There was a time earlier when all these Gentiles made this huge trek to come to Jesus in Galilee, but now he's come to them. What a blessing!"
Jesus draws near to the sinners. Jesus draws near to the needy. It's a beautiful thing. And that leads us to this sign that he does. Verse 32: "Then Jesus called his disciples to him and said, i have compassion on the crowd because they've been with me now three days and have nothing to eat. I mean, we're trying to figure out evening time how we're going to get dinner in before the service, right? Three days. Listen to this: "I'm unwilling to send them away hungry, lest they faint on the way."
What a verse. That's the kind of verse you just can read right over and not stop, right? I could preach a sermon on that today alone. Listen to him: "These people won't leave Christ. They won't leave his feet. They're needy and they're hungry. But on his part, how many times in Matthew has he welled up in his being with compassion? They're hungry. They need to eat. They don't have food, and I'm not willing for them not to eat because they might faint. What a Savior, you know?
Wasn't there a promise about fainting in the Bible? "They who wait on the Lord shall renew their strength. They shall mount up with wings like eagles. They shall run and not be weary. They shall walk and not faint."
The thing is, this miracle already happened, right? In chapter 14, he just fed the 5,000. And it's almost verbatim we have the same thing repeated here. And I had to stop and say, "Why? Why is the Lord showing us this? Why did he do this?" Some have said, "Well, it would be no better if it were left out." And what a sad treatment of the passage.
What's the shocking response of the passage? Lord, here's a shocking response from who? Lord, where are we going to get bread to feed these people? Are you kidding? Like you just saw the other miracle. How are we going to feed so great a crowd? You just saw it. You see, this captures something that is also very important about discipleship: it's the patience of our Lord toward his own disciples. We are so slow to understand. And he's patient with us. I mean, I would love all of you to be as far along as I am, right? I'm not any farther. You know how patient the Lord's been with me? And you are just as patient. So thank you. He's patient with you.
There's a video of a man pulling a sheep out of a ditch. And he works hard. It's a viral video. He works hard to pull the sheep out of the ditch. And he gets it out of the ditch. And the sheep bolts down about 10 feet and jumps right back in the ditch. Well, that's ministry. That's ministry. This is uh this is ministry jesus is patient not with the kind of rejection we see from the pharisees he's patient with us who are slow to understand his purposes and his mission. And I think about that with our children today in profession of faith. You know, do we give the perception that they just need to wait till they've sowed the wild oats a little bit and really, you know, really get everything just right? Or should we not encourage them: "Come, come today. Come today." Our ministry's patient. You're growing. We understand that. You may not get everything. You
"Give them something to eat." Deja vu. They had taken up 12 baskets before. Look down at verse 19: "Do you not remember the five loaves and the 5,000? How many baskets you gathered?" You know, how much leftover there was? All of this extra bread they had forgotten. They still didn't understand this. They still didn't understand this.
I remember a pastor speaking on this point and saying, "Can you imagine the discussion among the apostles after the ascension? They're going to the ends of the earth, and they're hungry. And one of them looks at the others and says, Hey, where are we going to get bread to eat? And the other goes, are you kidding? And they all just bust up laughing. Here's the bread come down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever. That's what he said. There's the meaning. There's more than enough bread for them."
There's more than enough bread. He makes them sit on the ground, and he takes the seven loaves and a few small fish, and same thing, he gives thanks and he breaks it and he, just like he does in the Supper that's why the supper is so important. So you have to eat Christ, you do, by faith. They took up seven baskets full. Notice this: the crowds ate and all were satisfied.
The woman just wanted the broken pieces, the little crumbs that come from the master's table. There's enough. When everyone looked down at verse 16 1 "And the Pharisees and Sadducees came," notice the spirit again the legal spirit, the grumpy spirit the spirit always putting him to the test this is the spirit that the people that are always grumpy always dissecting everyone else's life except their own. The Pharisees and Sadducees came to test him and asked him to show them a sign from heaven.
And the whole scene becomes Jesus warning about their bread, right? Their their doctrine. A sign from heaven. Did they not remember the sign from heaven in the wilderness when God dropped manna down upon them and they ate to the full (Exodus 16)? Do you see what's just happened? Two feedings. He's just fed Israel in the wilderness, and now he's just fed the Canaanites in the wilderness. Put it together. You can use John.
Jesus has taught us our whole life: our greatest need is him. "I am that. Our fathers did eat man in the desert, as is written. he gave them bread from heaven to eat Jesus said unto them, "Verily, verily, I say unto you: Moses gave you not the bread from heaven, but my Father gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is he. Listen, listen to the statement: the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to who? The world. All peoples Then they said to him, lord evermore give us this bread. jesus said i am the bread i'm the bread of life. He that comes to me shall never hunger, and he that believes on me shall never thirst.
Who's the bread for? The lame, the blind, the crippled, the mute, and many others.
This is not just merely a contrast of Jew and Gentile. This is a contrast played out of the self-righteous versus the needy. And Jesus is saving his people from their sins.
I said before: we are so sinful. If you have any sense of your misery, your emptiness, your failure, the things that you've done, the things that you do I think if you're honest before the Lord today, unless you've tried to cover all that up this is your great burden. If you have any sense of it, you know what you are. You wonder, because of sins and what you're prone to do, you wonder whether you really stand righteous before God. So we fill our life with amusements to try to get away from this question. We fill our lives with drinking and all kinds of things to get away from this question.
I want you to hear one verse with me today. It's a simple verse. It's a profound verse. It's the simple part of the sermon. I want you to hear one sermon, and I want you to memorize this sermon: "I have compassion on them, for they have nothing to eat. And I'm unwilling to send them away hungry, lest they faint on the way."
That's my sermon. Did you get it? That's my sermon. That's like as tightly said as I can give it. What news? That's the revelation of Christ's mercy to you that he's willing to give himself for you that it's one of the best verses to memorize in your times of doubt and struggle. If you have any awareness of your failure to meet God's standard, see and hear him: "I'm not willing to send my people away hungry."
He's not talking just about physical food as much as he cares about that. "I have compassion on you."
Now our faith will be tested. He's going to draw out what kind of faith is there. I say that to the profession of faith: your faith will be tested. That's what he does in our lives. And he's so faithful in doing it. He's going to draw out what kind of faith is there. But I ask the question: like these crowds, are we the people clinging to him?
He doesn't have to go to the bus stop today, does he? Right? He doesn't have to head down there. He came by the Escondido URC. And guess what? There's enough of the sinners here, aren't there, to deal with. It's a hospital. That's what this is. Don't let the coat and tie fool you. It's a hospital for the broken, for the sick. And if you will come to him by faith, he will heal that need for you. Just like the Canaanite.
Here's your promise: eat. Be satisfied. Feed on Christ. Believe in him. Next week we come to the Supper. Did I give you a good enough preparatory? It's the best preparatory I could give, I think. Come. Discern your sins and eat. He will save you from them. What a compassionate Savior he is.
Let's pray.
Heavenly Father, thank you for such a rich gift to us. Thank you for your mercies to us. Thank you for helping us Gentiles and making us the true Israel. Oh Lord, may we hear these words: "I have compassion on them. They're hungry. Feed us, oh Lord. Thank you for the feeding of your Word and Sacrament. Bless your people with confidence and faith. Thank you for the professions today. Bless this brother and sister in their profession adam and kate that as they are tested, they would have the same faith. Uphold them the whole way through, as with all our children. And may we be a people of praise, for we are people who've come, needy and broken, into the compassionate, merciful hands of our Savior. And what a place to be. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.