A Christian couple from the south decide that they want to get a dog. As they are walking down the street in town, they notice that a sign in the pet shop is advertising "Christian Puppies." Their interest piqued, they go inside.
"How do you know they’re Christian puppies?"
"Watch," says the owner, as he takes one of the dogs and says, "Fetch the Bible." The dog runs over to the desk, and grabs the Bible in its mouth and returns. Putting the Bible on the floor, the owner says, "Find Psalm 23." The dog flips pages with its paw until he reaches the right page, and then stops. Amazed and delighted, the couple purchase the dog and head home.
That evening, they invite some friends over and show them the dog, having him run through his Psalm 23 routine. Impressed, one of the visitors asks "Does he also know ’regular’ commands?"
"Gee, we don’t know. We didn’t ask," replies the husband.
Turning to the dog, he says, "Sit." The dog sits. He says, "Lie down." The dog lies down. He says "Roll over." The dog rolls over.
He says "Heel." The dog runs over to him, jumps up on the sofa, puts one paw on the owner’s forehead and bows his head.
"Oh look!" the wife exclaims. "He’s PENTECOSTAL!"
Any way you look at it, our passage today is shocking. A woman comes to Jesus for help, and Jesus brushes her off calling her a dog. Further, Jesus heals a man in a very unusual way – touching his tongue with his own saliva and placing his fingers in his ears. I don’t know about you, but when I’m reading my bible and I come across a section like this I am taken back by the apparent lack of mercy from the Jesus. I read a passage like this and I think to myself, “Wait a minute. Did I read that right?” Some passages are more difficult to figure out – that is just the nature of biblical interpretation.
A lot of times we read passages like this one can attempt to interpret it, to make sense of it with an assumption or two. We might start with, “Jesus must have been having a bad day” or maybe, “I’m not reading it right, perhaps Jesus really didn’t call the woman a dog”. To some extent these type of guesses are ok, they are a good place to start. Sometimes we have to start with our best guess, but we cannot stay there because a guess is only a guess, it is speculation. Speculation is not interpretation. We want to know the truth don’t we? So first we need to know that it is ok to take a guess about the meaning of a passage, as a place to start, but to treat a guess as solid information, that is where many times we first go wrong.
If we are not sure about something in a passage we need to look for help. The first place I would start would be with a verse cross reference. Some bibles have, over to the side, or on the bottom have a verse cross reference. This will give you another verse, or several other verses, in the bible that are directly related to the verse you are looking at. You just look to see if the verse you are having difficulty with is listed, and you look up the references. Many times this first step solves the mystery. The best type of biblical interpretation is when scripture interprets scripture.
Next, if cross referencing leaves you in the dark look at your footnotes. If you have a study bible you will have brief explanations about the verse. If you do not have a study bible, I would highly recommend getting one, there are several excellent ones on the market. As a rule, most of your difficult verses will have some sort of an explanation in a study bible – simply because the editors of the study notes know what verses are difficult to understand.
If you need more information look in a good bible commentary. A commentary will given you a much more expanded explanation than the brief notes a study bible can. We have some in our library, that would be a good place to start if you have never used a commentary.
If your are still stuck, ask a friend who knows the bible better than you. You can always ask either Ted or I, we answers questions about scriptures all the time.
However, most of all, I would encourage you to pray before you read you bible. True biblical interpretation comes through the power of the Holy Spirit. It is the Holy Spirit that will lead us and guide us to correct interpretation.
Now I know that for many of you this is old hat, but I want to point out for all of us, that we are not stuck on only our best guess when we are not sure what a verse means. We can find out the meaning of difficult bible verses, we don’t have to live in mystery.
Let me say one more thing before we jump into our passage this morning: Sometimes when folks come across a passage like this they say, “Jesus couldn’t have said this, it just doesn’t sound like Jesus.” So to conclusion meet the expectation of their conclusion they claim that the verse cannot be original material, in other words, someone added it later, so it is not really part of the bible, and therefore does not have biblical authority. Again, that is just speculation. Now they can give any number of highly educated sounding explanations, but they all fall short. Why? Because there is absolutely no physical evidence, only theory. When you look at the many biblical scrolls in existence in the Greek and the Hebrew, arguments such as this do not hold up because the claimed additions are simply not there. For example, in our scripture today, we do not find one scroll that says in verse 27 “dogs” and another scroll that does not – because such physical evidence does not exist. One would call such speculation: An educated guess, and even though it is educated, even highly educated, it is still speculation. For if person who is putting forth such a theory is asked to point out where in the many, many scrolls this variation exists, they cannot point out the variation, because it is not there.
Now, let me note that there are some differences found between scrolls, mostly very, minor, usually transposed letters. These variations have been corrected to very competent and Godly scholars to give us our modern Greek and Hebrew texts to work from. Additionally, all the modern translations have corrected any variations that are not original. All that to say that what you hold in your hands is very accurate and we do not have to worry about this nonsense of later additions to the biblical text.
Let’s look at our passage from Mark 7, starting in verse 24. The Hebrew population has followed Jesus and his disciples with great determination, they cannot get any time to themselves. So Jesus enters the vicinity of Tyre which is beyond the borders of Galilee. Jesus moves to Tyre for it is an area that has a sparse Jewish population, He is there to retreat away from the crowds to get rest for both himself and the disciples. He secretly enters a house for the same reason, but his presence cannot be kept secret and a woman hears about his presence and comes to ask for help. She has a daughter who is possessed by an evil spirit.
Let me stop and caution you again. Many times we as modern Americans read in the bible that someone is possessed by an evil spirit and we say, “Oh you mean she was emotionally disturbed, or psychotic.” Again, that is just speculation. We tend think of being possessed by evil spirits as a primitive evaluation of an emotionally disturbed person, but, again that is not what the bible says here. Here it means just what it says: Possessed by an evil spirit. We have to remember that Jesus takes it at face value so there is no reason we should not. And yes, possession by evil spirits is very real.
The woman falls at his feet, which shows great respect and humility before Jesus. As in the English, in the Greek the non Jewish character of the woman is highly stressed. She was a member of the Hellenize citizen class in the Phoenician republic of Tyre administered by Syria. I know that mean absolutely nothing to us, but that meant a great deal to people in the Roman world, what it means for us is this: She was as far from being a Hebrew as one could get. Jesus wanted to get far away from the Hebrew people following him, and ironically standing in front of Him is this woman who is about as far away from a Hebrew as He can get.
Here, to understand what is going on we need to focus on the exchange that occurred between Jesus and this woman, if you look in your bibles that starts in verse 26 were the woman begs Jesus to heal her daughter. Jesus reply in verse 27. “First let the children eat all they want,” he told her, “for it is not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to their dogs.”
It that an accurate translation of what Jesus said? Yes pretty much. What he means is this: The children are the nation of Israel, know as the children of God. Jesus has come for the children of God, that is the nation of Israel. So He is telling her that His mission is to Israel first and since she is not from Israel, he will not deal with her. We see this reinforced by Paul in Rom. 1:16, “I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile.”
But the way Jesus phrases His response to this woman, He places an enigmatic statement before her to test her faith – which the woman clearly understands. The puzzle He throws at her revolves around the word translated, dogs. Now Jesus does use the word dogs in verse 27, but the word that his uses does not simply mean dogs, it could mean puppies, but the best translation would be, little house dogs. The woman picks up on this and throws back a very witty reply ( I know it is not witty in English, but very witty in Greek), 28 “Yes, Lord,” she replied, “but even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.” Jesus is impressed, the faith of this Gentile woman contrasts dramatically with the determined unbelief of the Pharisees and the scribes in Jerusalem that Jesus had recently dealt with. Her witty reply indicated a degree of understanding that even the disciples do not seem to be able to obtain.
The distinction being made by Jesus is that between little house dogs, in contrast to yard dogs. Yard dogs, were kept outside and never let into the house, many times these dogs may not have been fed much and they really must fend for themselves. In contrast, little house dogs are invited into the house, and though they may be dogs, they are admitted to the household and are fed from the table.
Jesus is stating that it is inappropriate to interrupt the meal to feed the dogs, and even more to take the food meant for the children and give it to the pets. The people of Israel are to be fed first. The woman’s witty reply points out that the house dogs are in fact fed at the same time as the children. Jesus heals her daughter. (If you own a dog that lives in the house with you, and you have children, you know how true this is)
Additionally, Jesus initial refusal to help may be because in the Roman world there were many who went around claiming to have the ability to heal. They always attracted large crowds. The response to these men of magic was based upon superstition rather than faith. Jesus treats her as the typical Gentile who is working under superstition rather than faith.
Still, when all is said and done, Jesus refers to this Gentile woman as a dog. That is hard to hear. But we here my friends, were not the first choice to receive the Gospel, we who are not Jewish, are second. Jesus came for all people, but Jesus came first for the people of Israel. Jesus primary mission in His earthly ministry was to the Hebrews.
Notice Jesus doesn’t do an exorcism, or some recitation – it is already done. She places her faith in him fully. She just goes home. In contrast with the Pharisees she accepts his word, they see faith as doing the details.
Jesus then goes to the region of the Decaplois. Here again the Hebrew population is very sparse. Jesus would have been known in this region by probably only a few. Maybe Jesus can find some rest in this area. But the crowd shows up when He arrives and they bring a man who is dead and can hardly talk, verse 32.
Normally, it seems that Jesus says a word, or people simply touch Jesus and they are healed. But here Jesus takes some unusual steps to bring healing to the man. He places his fingers in the mans ears…apparently Jesus had not heard the saying, never place anything smaller than your elbow in your ears. Then He spits and touches the man’s tongue. As odd as this seems, what Jesus is doing is fulfilling prophecy from the OT, Is. 35:5 “Then will the eyes of the blind be opened and the ears of the deaf unstopped.” The fulfillment of this prophecy was expected in the days of the Messiah – Mark shows that it has, and shows again that Jesus is the messiah.
Ephphatha, says Jesus, which means, be opened. To us this does not mean much, but to those reading this gospel in the early church, they knew exactly what it meant. Jesus chooses his words carefully. This word also comes from the same root word as Maranatha, “Lord come quickly” and again is a sign that not only the Messiah has come but the end of the age has come with Jesus.
Though the Hebrews are not impressed with Jesus, as we have seen earlier in Mark, the Gentiles are. The great surprise exhibited by the people is shows that they were not expecting the man to be healed – they had only brought the man to Jesus for his blessing. They probably hadn’t seen healings from the gentile healers and so didn’t expect much from Jesus. The healing isn’t that the man spoke, but that he spoke without defect. Jesus brings about complete healing.
Here we have a passage that contains some things that are difficult to understand and we may want to take a guess, or even an educated guess, but that will leave us empty.
We see that though God choose the people of Israel as His people and that Jesus was sent first to them; We, who are second, are able to join in with Jesus also, through an act of faith. We see this in his immediate healing of the woman’s daughter and in his vivid healing of the deaf man. It is to the gentiles that Jesus shows he is fulfilling prophecy that he truly is the messiah who is bringing in a new age – and it is an age were everyone is welcome.
