Gospel of Mark Study #22

“Tyre Troubles”

Mark 7:24-37

Study #22 in Mark Series

INTRODUCTION:

When I was a pastor one of the hardest things for me to do on a weekly basis was to come up with good, catchy, meaningful titles for my sermons. A sermon title should inspire interest, whet the appetite of the hearer to learn more, and encapsulate the basic message of the text. However, it is not always easy to do. I struggled with what to call this week’s study. I came up with several titles and rejected them one by one. Finally, I chose to call this one, “Tyre Troubles.”

TRANSITION:

I chose this title, not because Jesus had a flat tire on His Jeep “Cherokee” while He and the boys were traveling through the rough country of Galilee. I chose it because in our text for this study we learn that Jesus and His guys left the Capernaum region in Israel and traveled to the city of Tyre in the neighboring country of Phoenicia (modern day Lebanon), to get away from all the hubbub and hassles they were experiencing in Galilee. To my knowledge, this was the only time during Jesus’ public ministry that He left Israeli territory. It was also the only time that He went into a totally Gentile province.

NOTES on the Text:

Verse 24: Jesus left that place and went to the vicinity of Tyre. He entered a house and did not want anyone to know it; yet He could not keep His presence secret.

• “Jesus left that place.” What place? Probably either Capernaum or Bethsaida, but certainly the Northern Galilee region. And He went where? Northwest of there to the Mediterranean coast and the region of Syrophoenicia. At that time Tyre and Sidon were the two major cities of that country, which today makes up the majority of modern Lebanon. But back then Phoenicia was part of Syria. Tyre sits on a narrow peninsula that juts out into the Mediterranean. It is located about 50 miles south of today’s capital city, Beirut. Syrophoenicia became a Roman province in 64 BC. The inhabitants of Tyre were Phoenicians, Canaanite Gentiles. Most of them had little knowledge of Judaism or Christianity, although back many years before, during the time of King David, there was a very lively trading relationship between the Phoenicians and the Israelites.
• By the way, it was no leisurely stroll from Capernaum to Tyre. Traveling by the route Jesus probably took it would have been a journey of about 60 miles on foot, over some very rough, rocky terrain.
• Jesus was apparently staying there with a Tyrian family (perhaps Jews, or maybe even Christians), but He did not want anyone to know where He was staying. Why? I believe that this was primarily a training mission for the disciples, rather than a ministry mission focused on preaching and teaching. Remember that the previous incident recorded in Mark (i.e., 7:14-23) was about Jesus wiping out the distinction between clean and unclean foods. Is it possible that Jesus is here wiping out the difference in His disciples’ minds between clean and unclean people? And maybe too, He just wanted some time for the disciples and Him to be away from the press of the crowd and the responsibilities of ministry. But Mark records that it did not work out that way for them.

Verses 25-26: In fact, as soon as she heard about Him, a woman whose little daughter was possessed by an evil spirit came and fell at His feet.  ²⁶ The woman was a Greek, born in Syrian Phoenicia [i.e., Syrophoenicia]. She begged Jesus to drive the demon out of her daughter. 

• I wonder if the woman of the house where Jesus was staying leaked word to one of her friends that the Master was staying under her roof. We do not know how word got out, but it obviously did.
• Mark records that this lady was a “Greek,” born in Syrian Phoenicia. What does that mean? In that day, Jews used the term loosely to refer to any Gentile. She may have been a Greek speaker and follower of the Greek religion, but certainly she was a Gentile of Canaanite descent. She was just an ordinary lost, unsaved person from that area.
• She came to Jesus and fell at His feet and begged for His help. She begged Him to cast the demon out of her young daughter. How did the woman know that Jesus could even do such things? Somebody who believed in Jesus must have told her. That is the power of a testimony!
• Matthew records this story as well, in 15:21-28. He describes the events this way: “And behold, a Canaanite woman came out from that region, and began to cry out, saying, ‘Have mercy on me, O Lord, Son of David; my daughter is cruelly demon-possessed.’ But He did not answer her a word. And His disciples came to Him and kept asking Him, saying, ‘Send her away, for she is shouting out after us.’ But He answered and said, ‘I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.’ But she came and began to bow down before Him, saying, ‘Lord, help me!’ And He answered and said, ‘It is not good to take the children’s bread and throw it to the little dogs.’ But she said, ‘Yes, Lord; but even the little dogs feed on the crumbs which fall from their master’s table.’ Then Jesus answered and said to her, ‘O woman, your faith is great; be it done for you as you wish.’ And her daughter was healed at once.”

Verse 27: “First let the children eat all they want,” He told her, “for it is not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to their [little] dogs.”

• This encounter between Jesus and this woman has for many years provided fodder for sceptics of Christianity. They assert that Jesus showed gross cruelty toward this woman, that He ignored her completely at first and that when He did finally address her, He did it using a racial slur calling her a “dog,” and that He showed total disregard for her problem. Is that true?
• We need to unpack this story and examine it piece by piece to understand their conversation.
• First, we need to recognize that there may have been more to the conversation than what Mark records here. He is just hitting the high points. Secondly, we need to be careful not to read our own feelings and values into the story. You will notice that the woman did not for one minute seem offended by Jesus’ remarks to her. She accepted what He said but offered a counterargument.
• “First let the children eat all they want,” He told her, “for it is not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to their [little] dogs.” What does that mean? Who are the “children” that He refers to? By that, He means the Jews, the Children of Israel. You must remember that during Jesus’ earthly ministry He concentrated all His time and effort on communicating the Gospel to the Jews. And even when He sent out His disciples to preach the Good News, He told them to go only to the Jews. Matthew records His words to them: “Do not go into the way of the Gentiles, and do not enter a city of the Samaritans. But go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel” (Matthew 10:5-6).
• Also, after His resurrection just before He ascended to Heaven, Jesus told the apostles: “And you shall be witnesses to Me in Jerusalem, and in all Judea, and Samaria, and to the end of the earth” (Acts 1:8). That sequence of places where the apostles would witness shows the order in which the Gospel was to be preached (i.e., to the Jews first, and then to the Gentiles). Moreover, the apostle Paul, in his Epistle to the Romans, said: “For I am not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes, for the Jew first and also for the Greek [i.e., Gentiles]” (Romans 1:16). Jesus’ statement here to the Syrophoenician woman merely indicated that the Jews were Jesus’ primary target for evangelism during His earthly ministry, but that the Gospel would eventually be carried by His disciples to every continent, nation, language, and people group.
• In a sense Jesus was saying to the woman, “Lady, you need to get back in line and await your turn.” But I believe He said it with a sweet smile on His face and with a kind, gentle voice. This was a test of faith for this dear troubled woman, and she passed the test. She did not cave in and run away. She pressed into Jesus, by faith, to get what she needed for her little daughter.
• Jesus was not a chauvinistic sexist. He was not mean and cruel. He was not stingy with His miracles. And He was also not a bigoted racist. Although Jesus used the Jewish term commonly applied to Gentiles, He softened it by using the diminutive form meaning “little dogs” or “puppies.” These were the beloved family pets that lived in the house, not the foul scavengers that roamed the streets. For this reason, the lady did not take offense. Jesus was just giving this woman an opportunity to show what she was made of, and what kind of faith she had in Him. I think Jesus often does the same to us, to strengthen our feeble faith. Rather than immediately give her what she needed, He made her plead her case and display her faith in Him. This was a test, and she passed it! Should it surprise us if He does the same thing to us sometime?

Verse 28: “Yes, Lord,” she replied, “but even the little dogs [i.e., puppies] under the table eat the children’s crumbs.”

• This was a very astute woman. She obviously understood the priority in the order of things. But her need drove her to advocate on behalf of her daughter, and she did this with a confidence that revealed her trust in the Lord’s goodness and mercy, and perhaps even in His sense of humor. She used Jesus’ own words to build her argument and to plead her case. It took a lot of courage in that culture for a woman to argue and disagree with a man, no matter how great her need might be. But Jesus was not offended by her argumentativeness. It delighted Him!

Verse 29: Then He told her, “For such a reply, you may go; the demon has left your daughter.”

• I love this! Jesus seems to be genuinely surprised and pleased by her courageous faith. Here is a Gentile woman, not of the house of Israel, yet she is showing more faith in Jesus than the people in His own hometown of Nazareth did.
• Look again at Matthew’s account: “O woman, your faith is great; be it done for you as you wish.”
• But Mark adds a tidbit of information. “For such a reply, you may go; the demon has left your daughter.” Jesus dismissed her with the promise that she had already received from Him that for which she had asked. Jesus used the perfect tense of the verb indicating that the miracle had already occurred. “The demon has left your daughter.” Isn’t that great! Jesus could command the demons by long distance. Moreover, He did not even need to say the words of command. Apparently, He just thought them, and the demons took off running.

Verse 30: She went home and found her child lying on the bed, and the demon gone.

• Can you imagine the joy in her house that night? Her child was well, the demon was gone, life was good, and all because of Jesus!
• Do you think that woman might have told a few of her close friends about what happened that day? The Bible does not tell us if she had a husband, or was a widow, or was perhaps even an unwed mother. It does not matter. I believe that for months and years to come she told everyone with whom she came in contact the story of what Jesus had done for her and her daughter. And most precious of all, I am certain that she recounted again and again to her little girl the story of how Jesus had healed her and set her free from the dominion of Satan.

Verses 31-32: Then Jesus left the vicinity of Tyre and went through Sidon, down to the Sea of Galilee and into the region of the Decapolis.  ³² There some people brought to Him a man who was deaf and could hardly talk, and they begged Him to place His hand on the man.

• It sounds like Jesus did not hang around Tyre for long. He and the boys headed north, traveling approximately 25 miles along the beautiful Mediterranean seashore up toward the city of Sidon. However, they were in no hurry. This whole trip from Galilee to Phoenicia and back likely took a couple of months. It was the calm before the storm. It was time away that Jesus invested in His disciples. Finally, from Sidon they headed eastward and then cut south back toward Galilee. But they did not return to the villages on the northern shore. Instead, they continued down the eastern side of the lake to the region known as Decapolis. This was a province made up of 10 Greek-culture-and-language cities on the eastern and south-eastern side of the Sea of Galilee. The word Decapolis is just Greek for, “ten cities.” The text does not tell us which of the cities they went to, and it is of no great concern to us.
• So how long was this whole trip? Let’s add it up. Jesus walked about 60 miles to get from Capernaum to Tyre. Then it was another 25 miles between Tyre and Sidon. From there it was another 85 miles or so back to the Capernaum region. But Jesus did not stop there. He went on another ±30 miles south to the Decapolis region. That all adds up to approximately 200 miles of walking. That is quite a trek!
• “There some people brought to Him a man who was deaf and could hardly talk.” This tells us several things:
• The man had friends who loved him and who believed in Jesus’ power to heal. They were the active agents in bringing the man to Jesus. This is much like the story of the paralytic and his friends in Mark 2:1-12.
• The man had probably not been born deaf but had gone deaf as a small child. This is proved by his limited ability to speak.
• Very possibly the man did not even understand where his friends were taking him. Being deaf, he probably knew nothing about Jesus until after he was healed. Remember, American Sign Language had not yet been invented.
• Jesus was this man’s last hope because there was no medical cure for his infirmity.

Verses 33-35: After He took him aside, away from the crowd, Jesus put His fingers into the man’s ears. Then He spat and touched the man’s tongue.  ³⁴ He looked up to Heaven and with a deep sigh said to him, “Ephphatha!” which [in Aramaic] means, “Be opened!”  ³⁵ At this, the man’s ears were opened, his tongue was loosened, and he began to speak plainly.

• “[Jesus] took him aside, away from the crowd…” Why did Jesus do that? It was not His normal way. We do not really know, but for some reason Jesus isolated the man while He worked on him. And based on verse 36 I believe Jesus allowed only the man’s friends plus His twelve disciples to be present during the healing. That is much like what He did when He healed Jairus’ little 12-year-old daughter in Mark 5:35-43.
• “Jesus put His fingers into the man’s ears. Then He spat and touched the man’s tongue.  ³⁴ He looked up to Heaven and with a deep sigh said to him, “Ephphatha!” As interesting as it is for us to speculate why He did all of this, in a sense it makes no difference. Jesus never followed a healing formula. He did not use incantations. He did not use sorcerer’s spells. Sometimes He used words and sometimes He did not. Sometimes He touched the person and sometimes He did not. It is interesting that of all Jesus’ healing miracles described in the NT no two of them were ever alike. I am certain that He could have stood on His head on an apple box and healed that man just as easily. He could have done it while riding a galloping horse. It was not about His technique—it was about His authority and His power and His Person.  

Verses 36-37: Jesus commanded them not to tell anyone. But the more He did so, the more they kept talking about it.  ³⁷ People were overwhelmed with amazement. “He has done everything well,” they said. “He even makes the deaf hear and the mute speak.”

• “Jesus commanded them not to tell anyone.” Who does the “them” refer to? To the man and his friends, I think. Jesus did this several times, always with the same result. He was trying to avoid excessive publicity, but the people would not be deterred. The more He tried to shut them up, the more they spread the word about what He had done for them. Literally the text says in verse 36 that they “kept proclaiming” (Greek imperfect tense) the miracle “all the more exceedingly.”
• I think that the important thing here is to note that the people still were not getting it—they still did not understand who He really was. Oh, they were “amazed,” all right. They were “overwhelmed” by the wonder of the miracle. They were pleased with Jesus’ performance— “He has done everything well,” they said. Like the judges on “The Voice” or “Dancing with the Stars,” they gave Jesus a score of “10!” because He had done everything so well.

CONCLUSION:

The question is, did they really believe that He was God in flesh, the eternal God of very God, the Savior, the Messiah of Israel, the Lamb of God who had come to take away the sins of the world?  Some of them believed that and put their complete faith and confidence in Him as their Savior and Lord. Those people were saved, and we will see them in Heaven someday. But most of the others merely saw Him as a genuinely good prophet who knew how to pull off a good miracle, and who “did everything well.” Those people died in their sins and will not be in Heaven.

In the end, what we believe about Jesus is the only thing that really matters. What we believe about Him, who we believe Him to be, and how we act on that faith will determine where we spend eternity.

Have you come to know Him personally, or do you just know about Him? To you, is He your Savior and Lord, or is He just the teacher/healer who went about doing good things? The answer to that question will determine where you go when you die. You cannot afford to get the answer wrong. There are no “mulligans,” no “do-overs,” and no “make-up tests.”

Acts 4:12 – “And there is salvation in no one else; for there is no other name under heaven that has been given among men by which we must be saved.”

Acts 16:31 – “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household.”