Mark 7:27,28 “Let the children first be filled: for it is not meet to take the children’s bread, and to cast it unto the dogs. And she answered and said unto him, Yes, Lord: yet the dogs under the table eat of the children’s crumbs.”
Do any of you have a son or daughter that is trapped in the vices of some sort of demonic powers? If so, today’s study is tailor-made for you. The Lord Jesus’ popularity is growing, but so is the intensity of the opposition to Him and His message. Thus, having been rejected by the Jewish religious leaders, Jesus moves into the Gentile area of Tyre and Sidon. We are told that Jesus entered into a house, and apparently was looking for a time of peace and quiet. But Jesus could not be hidden. A Syro-Phoenician woman, who has a daughter that was grievously vexed with a devil, falls at His feet and cries out for Him to have mercy on her daughter. His disciples tell Jesus to send her away, but Jesus ignores their request. At first He is silent. Then He begins to engage in a conversation with her about how His first priority was to the house of Israel.
Perhaps some background would help here on “table manners” in that culture. In those days people did not have either knives or forks or table-napkins. They ate with their hands; they wiped the soiled hands on chunks of bread and then flung the bread away and the house-dogs ate it. So in essence the woman was saying, ‘I know the children are fed first, but can’t I even get the scraps the children throw away? If you will be my Master, I will eat the crumbs that fall from your table.’ Humility in the sight of God is oftentimes the doorway to great expressions of faith. Jesus marveled at her great faith and delivered her daughter from the control of this devil. Her daughter was immediately healed, delivered, set free by the power of God. Devils and demons make it their business to oppress, harass, and attack the image bearers of God. But Jesus declared, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised” (Luke 4:18) Indeed, deliverance, healing, and salvation are the believers’ bread. Selah
