As believers, our love for one another should be able to transcend any perceived slight or offense. Our love should reach across the aisle to apologize if we have hurt someone’s feelings, or unintentionally wounded them in any way. Without love at the core of a church like ours—a diverse church with people of all races, many nations and cultures, and yes, even various political perspectives—without love, we will never survive. Like Paul, my prayer is that our love will grow more and more.
We might think it is demeaning to refer to oneself as a slave or a servant, but in the first century, the slave of a high-ranking official often had more influence and authority than the average free Roman citizen. A servant sent in the name of his master came with conferred authority; therefore, to rebuff the servant was to rebuff the one who sent him. As the servants of Jesus Christ, we have been sent in His name, and there is power in the name of Jesus.
If we pay attention to what God is doing in our lives, I believe we will discover that God prepares us for what is coming before are even aware it is coming. Often, it is only when we look back that we see and understand that God is always two steps ahead of any problem or challenge that the enemy tried to put in our path.
Studying this passage, the first step I see in the path to purpose is “be prepared.” The Prophet Isaiah said the Messiah would be born to a virgin (Is 7:14), and Mary had maintained her purity. If she had compromised her purity for a moment of pleasure, she would have forfeited the honor that was to be hers. Once we embrace the idea that we have a God-given purpose, we need to prepare.
We call the Friday following Thanksgiving “Black Friday” because retailers open their doors with big sales intended to lure in Christmas shoppers. These sales are a major source of annual income for retailers, and can be the difference between getting their finances in the black (meaning they made a profit for the year), or ending the year in the red (having a net loss). However, the first black Friday was when Jesus died on the cross at noon and the sun refused to shine. God’s gift was our gain, and because of the red that Jesus bled on that Friday, we can end our lives in the black, in the positive rather than the negative. Jesus paid our debt with His own blood and ransomed us from sin.
Without the covering of salvation in the name of Jesus, we are running naked in the night, but the call of the Father is to come home and let Him cover us. This is the reason Jesus went to face His accusers and to offer His life as a ransom for many.
We might wonder if God knows how we feel in those moments, after all, He is Almighty God and we are but finite specs of dust against the backdrop of the universe. How could He possibly know the pain of rejection, betrayal, and abandonment that we know?
We live in a world of hurting people, wounded people who think no one cares and who believe we will not look beyond their sins to offer compassion and concern rather than criticism and condemnation. We can care about sinners without condoning sin, and we love the lost without approving of their lifestyle. They are in the darkness, so we must be the light that draws them to Christ. Only He can transform their lives into something beautiful. We know He can, because for that’s our testimony.
If I walk into the ring and knock out the champ, what does that make me? Well Jesus was pounding Satan into the mat with every miracle, every deliverance, every healing, and every word. If Satan was the strong man, then Jesus is Messiah, Son of God, God incarnate. Why weren’t the Pharisees, the priests, or the scribes defeating Satan? They couldn’t because they were more committed to their religion than they were to the truth.
In our text we see a Gentile mother going to a man from Galilee named Jesus—a man some were saying was the Jewish Messiah. Only a mother desperate for her daughter’s deliverance would presume to go to person from an ethnic group who considered her to be an unclean dog. Yet, before this encounter was over, Jesus said this Canaanite woman had “great faith.” This is significant, because only two times in the Bible does Jesus call someone’s faith “great,” and in both cases they are Gentile.
