Today's readings are Deuteronomy 20.1-21 ( http://www.gnpcb.org/esv/search/?q=Deut.+20.1-20 ) and Matthew 15.21-39 ( http://www.gnpcb.org/esv/search/?q=Matt.+15.21-39 ).
In Matthew 15.21-28 we see a microcosm of God's redemptive love. A Canaanite woman comes to Jesus and asks him to heal her daughter. Jesus first makes no reply to her whatsoever. She persists in trying to talk with Jesus, who gives two perfectly reasonable explanations for an unwillingness to heal her daughter. He was sent to the people of Israel. They are the chosen people of God. In the end Jesus does heal her daughter.
What's going on here? Do we see an example that says our persistence in prayer, our persuasiveness, our unwillingness to let go of God will bring the answer we desire? Many people will teach that using this passage and the parable of the neighbor who comes late at night asking for food as their texts. But this is not consistent with the sovereign grace and will of God revealed throughout Scripture. So what do we do with this?
First, observe that the woman had no real claim on God's mercy. Our Lord is the God of Israel. He has never made the kind of claims for the people of Tyre and Sidon that he does for the descendants of Abraham. There is no reason why the woman would seek out Jesus based on her heritage or his.
The woman comes to him anyway and is quite forceful and persistent about it. "Jesus heals other people. My daughter is as important as they are. And I'm a good person who comes and asks for his attention!" This begging of our own merit is universally rejected by our Lord. In effect he says, "Really? You are worthy of salvation? You are worthy of forgiveness by the God of creation? You should be accepted by the one who has no sin and who doesn't allow sin into his presence? Go ahead, prove it."
We are not going to prove our merit. Nor does the Canaanite woman. She cannot prove her merit because she doesn't have merit before God. None of us does. It doesn't matter how good we are, how many things we have done with our lives, or how needy we or the people we know might be. This has no merit before God.
While the woman is persisting in asking Jesus' help she begins humbling herself. Jesus says that not even dogs, among the least respected animals in the culture, get the provision that is intended for the children. She has no recourse but to be a child. And she has tried the fact that she is a caring mother and that her child is in desperate straits. What does the woman do?
She puts her desires to death, leaves her worthiness and her daughter's plight behind, and realizes that she should have no better treatment than a despised mongrel which would just as easily be cuffed on the ear and sent whining out the door.
How does our pride, our sense of wishing to receive what we deserve or to claim the right to beg on others' behalf interfere with our relationship with the living God? In the end, like the Canaanite woman, we must die to ourselves and live to Christ. We realize our sinfulness and that we must die so Christ can live in us.
"O almighty God, merciful Father, I, a poor, miserable sinner, confess to you all my sins and iniquities with which I have ever offended you and justly deserved your punishment now and forever. But I am heartily sorry for them and sincerely repent of them, and I pray you of your boundless mercy and for the sake of the holy, innocent, bitter sufferings and death of your beloved Son, Jesus Christ, to be gracious and merciful to me, a poor sinful being."
We have been put to death with Christ and are raised with him in newness of life.
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