Did Jesus just say that?!
Pray: Humbly ask God to give you wisdom to understand this portion of the Bible and the faith to live out what He reveals to you.
READ: Mark 7:24-37
27 But Jesus said unto her, Let the children first be filled: for it is not meet to take the children's bread, and to cast it unto the dogs.
28 And she answered and said unto him, Yes, Lord: yet the dogs under the table eat of the children's crumbs. (Mark 7:27-28)
This first story usually strikes us as a bit odd. Jesus isn’t the kind, lovable, BFF we all expect him to be. Even when we read stories about him straight up laying the smack down on the Pharisees, we applaud and say that’s well and fine, but we don’t like it when we see him being dismissive of this Gentile mother. We could try to explain it away, and say that maybe he was smiling and laughing when he called her a dog or maybe it was a term of endearment, but… yeah, neither of those really check out. It was a common insult that Jews would use to describe Gentiles.
Mark doesn’t try to explain it, Mark doesn’t try to soften the blow, Mark doesn’t really seem to care what we think of how Jesus talks to this woman. And maybe that’s the point. Jesus interferes with our lives. If you follow Jesus long enough and if you read the Bible long enough, you’re going to encounter all kinds of things that wreck our pretty little worlds and offend our delicate sensibilities.
He doesn’t fit our box! The amazing part of this passage isn’t what Jesus said, but how the woman responded. She responded in humility and faith, and she was rewarded.
How often do we hit these difficult changes we know we need to make in our life and say, “I can’t tell my wife that!”, “I can’t tell my boss that!”, “I can’t let my friends know this…,” instead of humbly submitting to the Lord who is our only hope?
Reflection Questions:
1. What are some difficult things Jesus has asked of you, and how did you respond?
2. Had you been this woman, how would you have responded?
3. What do you suppose would have been the outcome had you responded differently than she did?
Memory Verse: Mark 7:37
37 They were extremely astonished and said, “He has done everything well! He even makes deaf people hear, and people unable to speak,talk!”
This week's devotional is written by John Wells. John is a City Church Owner who serves as a Redemption Group Leader and works for the IT Department of UF.