But now we find our Lord turning to a different thought. He goes away from these scribes and Pharisees to the coasts of Tire and Sidon, that is, to the very extremity of the Holy Land, and that particular quarter of the borders of it that had been expressly the scene of the judgments of God. In chapter xi. our Lord had referred to them, and said, that it would be more tolerable for Tire and Sidon at the day of judgment, than for the cities where His mighty works had been done. They were proverbial as the monuments of God's vengeance among the Gentiles. There our Lord is met by a woman of Canaan coming out of the same coasts. If there was one race in all these borders more particularly under God's ban, it was Canaan. “Cursed,” said Noah, “be Canaan.” Such a deep character of evil had come in by the youth Canaan, who seems to have been specially the leader of his father in his wickedness against his grandfather Noah. “Cursed be Canaan. A servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren.” And so, when Israel was brought into the land, the Canaanites were to be exterminated without mercy. They were persons whose abominations had gone up to heaven with a cry for vengeance from God. Here this woman came out of the coasts of Canaan, and cries unto Him, saying, “Have mercy upon me, O Lord, thou son of David: my daughter is grievously vexed with a devil.” If we could have conceived any case most of all opposed to what we had before—scribes and Pharisees of Jerusalem, full of learning and outward veneration for the law—we have it in this poor woman of Canaan.
The circumstances, too, were dreadful. Not only was it in Tire and Sidon, recalling the judgments of God, but the devil had taken possession of her daughter. All these circumstances together made the case to be as deplorable a one as could be found. How was the Lord going to deal with her? The Lord shows, in meeting her case, a great change in His ways. We have seen the Jews pronounced hypocrites; their worship intolerable to God, and declared such through their own prophets. For if the Lord pronounced these men to be hypocrites, He did it out of the lips of their own prophet Isaiah. Now comes one that had not the smallest tie with Israel. In former times, the obligation of Israel had been to kill the Canaanites. How would the Messiah deal with her? She cries unto the Lord, saying, “Have mercy on me, O Lord, thou son of David: my daughter is grievously vexed with a devil. But he answered her not a word.” Not a word!
Why was this? She was on totally wrong ground. What had she to do with the son of David? If the Lord had acted as the son of David, what could he have done with her except order her to be executed? Had the Lord merely been the son of David, could he have given her the blessing He had in His heart? She appealed to Him as if she were one of a chosen people who had claims on Him as their Messiah. Was it ever promised that Messiah was to heal the Canaanites? Not a word about it. When the Messiah does come as son of David, the Canaanites will not be there, Look at Zech. 14, and you will find that, when our Lord shall be King over all the earth, “In that day there shall be no more the Canaanite in the house of the Lord of Hosts.” So that it is plain that the judgments which were not thoroughly executed by Israel, because they were unfaithful to the trust of the Lord, are to be executed by and by when the son of David will take His inheritance. This woman was altogether confused about it. She had the conviction that He was much more than the son of David, but she did not know how to bring it out. In the same way, many persons now, anxious about their sins, have tried the Lord's Prayer, and have asked the Lord to forgive them their sins as they forgive others. They go to God as their Father, and ask of Him to deal with them as children. But that is the very thing which is not yet settled. Are they children? Can they say that God is their Father? They would shrink from it. It is that which they chiefly desire, but they fear it is not so: i.e., that they have no right to draw near to God on the footing of a relationship that does not exist. So that when persons are thus confused, they never get thorough peace to their souls. Sometimes they are hoping they are the children of God, sometimes fearing they are not, cast down with the sense of the evil within them. The fact is, they do not understand the matter at all. They are quite right in wishing to turn to God, but they do not know how to do it. They are not willing to go to God in all that they are—just as they are—giving up all thought of having promises or anything else. This shows the wrongness of an anxious soul seeking after God on the ground of promises. A good deal is said about sinners “grasping the promises;” but I say you have no title to grasp the promises. Who were they for? In the Old Testament they were for Israel; in the New, for Christians. But you are neither an Israelite nor a Christian. A soul brought to that point is confounded.
It is good for a soul to be brought to this: I have no claim upon God for anything; I am a lost sinner. If God shakes a person from what they have no right to, if He strips them of everything, it is for the purpose of giving them a blessing that He has a right to give them. People forget that now it is the righteousness of God—God's right to bless through Christ Jesus, according to all that is in His heart. No right of theirs: sin has destroyed that. The cross has come in. Men are lost. But they are afraid to confess the true ruin in which they are found. This is what the Lord was dealing with in the poor woman of Canaan. He was bringing her down to feel that she had no right to the promises. As son of David He had promises. He was to do all kind of things for Israel: but where were the promises to the Canaanites? So that on the ground of promise, on the ground of His being the son of David, it was impossible for the Lord to give her what she asked. She did not understand that. She thought that if an Israelite might go on the ground of promise, she might. But it is a mistake. “All the promises of God in Him are yea, and in Him amen, unto the glory of God by us.” But who are the “us?” We who have the Lord Jesus. When we have got Christ without a promise, then we have a Christ in whom all the promises of God are yea and amen. We go to Him as sinners, naked and bare, without the smallest help even of a promise. But when we have got Christ as sinners, then we find that in this Blessed One all the promises of God are found ours. But we get Him as lost sinners first, and there are no such things as promises to lost sinners. Not a soul has a right to a promise till he has got Christ; and when we have got Christ, we have got all the promises. So God will deal with Israel by and by; not on any claim that they have got, for He has allowed them to forfeit that by rejecting Christ now. “For God hath concluded them all in unbelief, that he might have mercy upon all. 0 the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God!”
This poor woman compelled the Lord not to answer her. If He had spoken to her, it must have been with a rebuke. It was grace and tenderness that led the Lord not to answer her: He remains silent till she drops the ground that she had first taken. But the disciples were not silent; they wanted to get rid of her importunity; they did not like the trouble of her. “They came and besought him, saying, Send her away, for she crieth after us.” But the Lord confirms what has been already said as to the wrongness of her plea, He says, as it were, She does not belong to the house of Israel: I cannot give her a blessing on the ground she takes, but I will not send her away without a blessing. He stands for the special privilege of the sheep of the house of Israel, and she was not a sheep. She could not get the blessing on that ground. “He answered and said, I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” Then the poor woman “came and worshipped him, saying, Lord, help me.” She drops the words “son of David.” She no longer uses the title which connects Him with Israel, but acknowledges His lordship, His authority. Now He answers her, though she is not vet down low enough. When she appeals to Him as Lord, which was a suitable title, He answers, “It is not meet to take the children's bread and to cast it to dogs.” The moment that this is uttered, all the secret is out. “Truth, Lord,” she says, “yet the dogs eat of the crumbs that fall from their masters' table.” She takes the place of being a dog. She acknowledges that Israel was, in the outward ways of God, the favored people, as children eating of bread upon the table; whereas the Gentiles were but the dogs around it. She acknowledges it, and it is very humbling. People do not like it now. But she is brought down to it. The Lord may, for the purpose of leading us into deeper blessing, break us down to the very lowest point of the truth about ourselves. But was there no blessing even for a dog? She falls back upon this truth: let it be that I am a dog, has not God some blessing for me? No one could fancy that there were ever promises for dogs; yet that was the place she took. When she is brought down from it, the Lord gives her the full blessing. He even meets her with the strongest approbation of her faith— “O woman, great is thy faith: be it unto thee even as thou wilt.” When He had pronounced the sentence upon the nation of the Jews, who were only hypocrites, the Lord goes out to the Gentiles. Faith meets with its blessing. The faith that penetrates through outward circumstances, and bears the discovery that we have not yet got down to the lowly place that we ought to take, only receives deeper and more enduring blessing than ever. The poor woman was blessed even to her heart's content. “Be it unto thee even as thou wilt. And her daughter was made whole from that very hour.” This was grace—and grace dealing with the most extreme case of a Gentile is that which occupies the Lord on His turning away from Israel.
But there is more than this. It is not the Lord retiring after He has fed the multitude, but the Lord coming down from the mountain in sovereign goodness. “Jesus departed from thence, and came nigh unto the sea of Galilee; and went up into a mountain and sat down there.” It is now the Lord, who had been away visiting the Gentiles, when the multitude can approach to Him. “Great multitudes came unto him, having with them those that were lame, blind, dumb, maimed, and many others, and cast them down at Jesus' feet, and he healed them: insomuch that the multitude wondered when they saw the dumb to speak, the maimed to be whole, the lame to walk, and the blind to see: and they glorified the God of Israel.” I consider that this is a picture of Israel feeling their real condition. They are coming to Jesus, looking to Him, and saying, as it were, “Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord.” They are to speak thus by and by; and the Lord said they should not see Him till they should say, Blessed be he that cometh in the name of the Lord. What they saw in Jesus led them to glorify the God of Israel. It is the Lord having relations with Israel. They come not now in controversy, but as a poor, maimed, blind, and miserable multitude; and the Lord heals them all. But that is not He feeds them as well as heals them; and we have the beautiful miracle of the loaves.
But mark the differences. In a former case, the disciples were for sending the multitudes away; and the Lord allowed them to show out their unbelief. In the present instance, it is Christ Himself that thinks of them and purposes to bless them. “I have compassion,” says He, “on the multitude, because they continue with me now three days, and have nothing to eat: and I will not send them away fasting, lest they faint in the way.” You may remember that it is said in Hos. 6, “After two days will he revive us, and the third day he will raise us up, and we shall live in his sight.” It is the full time of the trial of the people. Literally, it was the time our Lord laid in the grave. But it is connected also with the future blessing of Israel. “I will not send them away fasting lest they faint by the way. And his disciples say unto him, Whence should we have so much bread in the wilderness, as to fill so great a multitude?” How slow they are to learn the resources of Christ, as before to learn the worthlessness of man. “Jesus saith unto them, How many loaves have ye'? And they said, Seven, and a few fishes.” It is not now five loaves, and twelve basketsful left; but seven loaves with which they begin, and seven with which they end. The reason is this: Seven is always the number of spiritual completeness in Scripture, and this is intended to spew the fullness with which the Lord makes the blessing to flow to His people; the fullness of provision that they have in Him. “He took the seven loaves and the fishes, and gave thanks, and brake them, and gave to the disciples, and the disciples to the multitude.” I conceive that this is the picture of the Lord providing amply for the Jews—for Israel—the people of His choice, whom he never can abandon, to whom he must accomplish His promises, because He is the faithful God. Here the Lord, out of His own heart, is providing for their refreshment fully, even for their bodily refreshment. This will be the character of the millennial day, when not only the soul will be blessed, but where every kind of mercy will abound, God vindicating His world from the hand of Satan, who has defiled it. Even here below, there will be this flowing out of divine compassion toward them, and giving them all they need. In the seven loaves before they eat, and the seven baskets of fragments taken up after they had eaten, you have the idea of completeness, an ample store for wants to come.