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.
In verse 5 John refers to “the message,” from the Greek anggelia, meaning “announcement, information, or message.” He says they received the message, the information, from Jesus and they were declaring it without distortion or apology. What is the message? It is “that God is light and in Him is no darkness at all.” God is pure light, meaning there is no impurity or imperfection in God. It is this message, this light from God, that exposes the lies, the falsehoods, and the deception of the heretics and opens the door for people of faith to have fellowship with one another.
General revelation notwithstanding, fallen humanity cannot ascend into the heavens and unveil a holy God. The scientists cannot prove God in a test-tube or expose Him through a powerful telescope. The philosophers cannot reveal God through their “philosophizing.” The poets cannot reveal God through their rhymes, nor the writers through their rhetoric. The finite mind of humanity cannot pull back the veil and reveal God. Only God can reveal God, so “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.” “The only begotten God, the One being in the bosom of the Father, that One declared Him.” When I could not go to where He was, He came to me and said, “Here I am!”
