Light on the Hill

James Kaddis: They realized that the only way they can find healing to the difficult situation that they find in their lives is by going to the God who created them, who they knew if there was ever a chance that something could be fixed, it would be by going to him. I think that's the way each and every single one of you experienced God for the first time. It doesn't matter where you came from.

At one point, you had to get to the place where you recognized that the condition of whatever ailment you were experiencing in that moment could only be fixed by dealing with something that you were ill-equipped to be able to deal with, something that you did not know how to handle or understand or recognize. And in doing so, it forced you to a place of desperation only to put your faith and trust in something that you weren't quite sure would actually fix the problem, but you did it recognizing it was your only hope.

Guest (Male): I have found the peace only comes from you. I have found the joy only comes from you because all I need is you.

Guest (Female): Have you ever faced a problem so big it was beyond your ability to solve? I think we've all been there. That's the place we find a Syrophoenician woman in Mark chapter 7. Her daughter is ill, and she realized it was a spiritual issue that could not be dealt with on her own. She came to Jesus for help. Here's Pastor James Kaddis on Light on the Hill in Mark chapter 7.

James Kaddis: We are in Mark chapter 7, and we're going to start in verse 24. Before we do, I want to remind you guys of something that is obvious. Of course, something that we've been talking about a lot because like every book of the Bible, there's always going to be an emphasis on the things that we can't see. I think that this is really important because I think that every single time we spend any type of effort or energy in trying to figure out or understand the tangible things that are in front of us, we forget about the most important things which are the things that drive what's in front of us.

If anybody here has any experience at all with any level of engineering, computer programming, anything like that, just raise your hand really quickly. One of the things that you learn very quickly when you swim around in this field or any of these fields when you're trying to troubleshoot a problem is you always want to find out what is the root of the cause. You don't ever want to focus any kind of time working on fixing the symptom; you really want to find out what is actually happening.

Sometimes it's referred to as root cause analysis. You really want to spend time digging into the issue that's creating the problem instead of the problem. Of course, in the world in which we live today, we spend a lot of time focusing on the problem and seeking to fix the symptoms of the problem instead of really dealing with the sickness. Of course, we've got to the point in our world today where we spend so much time focusing on the actual sickness and the symptoms that we actually have made it taboo to focus on the actual problem.

For example, if I was born a man and I start walking around insisting that I'm a woman and I actually tell other people to refer to me as a woman, I'm mentally ill. There's mental illness there. But the reason why we won't do that anymore, the reason why we won't allow anybody to say things like that is because we've abandoned the mindset that seeks to deal with the root cause of what is bringing those things about. We spend a lot of time looking at the actual superficial issues, we look at the manifestations, and we seek to treat the manifestations by normalizing them.

By saying, "Listen, I'm going to embrace this because this is how you feel," and actually the right thing to do is to embrace how you feel because that's the only thing that's going to make everything work, we just have to accept it. When in reality, people that have any reasonable level of common sense will say, "Actually, no, we have to fix the gas leak before we start putting perfume in the air so that we can pretend there is no gas."

I think that's the problem that we have. We spend so much time focusing on the physical manifestations of all of the issues that we're facing and dealing with that we don't really understand the spiritual mechanisms that drive them. I was just talking to somebody recently about this new movement that we're beginning to see manifest in the YouTube trophosphere of all of these people who have no expertise in any of the geopolitics related to the Middle East, yet they're making wild assertions about the Middle East, almost all of which are anti-Semitic in nature.

It's funny how that goes because the way people are seeking to deal with it is by dealing with the debate itself on the surface rather than identifying the spiritual issue that drives where these conclusions are coming from. The problem is when you don't deal with the thing that you can't see, then the thing that you can see will be the very thing that will be used to actually destroy you. The more you begin to wrestle with the very elements that are in front of your eyes instead of actually trying to figure out what brought it to your eyes, you're going to continue to have a problem.

This is something that Jesus deals with on such a regular basis, and he's so good at dealing with it that it appears as though many of his responses become very discombobulated. I can tell you example after example. One of the most common and well-known examples of this is when Jesus approaches a woman who's at the well, and the woman begins to ask Jesus a very poignant question, one that was actually one that had been debated since the very moment that a civil war ensued within the nation of Israel.

Right back to the days of King Solomon and King Jeroboam and King Rehoboam and Jeroboam for that matter. Going back to those days where the war broke out, you had the northern kingdom that broke away from the southern kingdom. There was always a debate as to what worship was accepted by God. Of course, this was because of a massive, for lack of a better term, satanically inspired campaign that Jeroboam had placed within the northern kingdom because he wanted people to stop going and taking their pilgrimage to the southern kingdom to worship in the temple.

Every time they went to go worship in God's temple, they became very patriotic, and as they became very patriotic, it was their heart to want to go back to the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. So what Jeroboam chose to do was he chose to create alternate sites of worship that were very close to the capital of the northern kingdom and eventually got further and further north near Samaria.

The most interesting aspect of all of that was Jeroboam, in his wicked, deep-rooted political understanding of what makes people tick—and I believe he was inspired by the devil—he set up all these high places that were near where everybody to the north was. He basically hired the priests that ran the temple, the real temple, he put them in the place where all the high places were, and then he basically told the children of Israel, especially or specifically the northern kingdom of Israel, he told them, "Hey, you can worship alternatively here."

"You don't have to make your pilgrimage, your four or five or six or seven or eight or ten-day pilgrimage from the north all the way to the south where Jerusalem is. You can simply stay right here because you can do the same things. You can celebrate the feasts here, you can do everything. It's going to be a local one-stop shop." Since that happened, there have been wide-range debates that existed between the northern kingdom and the southern kingdom specifically with respect to where was the appropriate place to worship.

Do you worship here in Jerusalem, or do you go and you worship where the traditional areas, well at least the newer traditional areas, were established that were in the northern kingdom? So there had been a very wide-range of debates. Of course, if you remember, this woman who's at the well, who gets approached by Jesus, has a very interesting question. And the question that she asks was a legitimate one; it wasn't like one that was illegitimate.

It was actually a reasonable question that was founded upon an argument that had been voiced for a long time, and she says, "Where's the right place to worship? Where do we go?" Jesus in essence, for the most part, says a few things, but for the most part, he pretty much tells her, "Hey woman, go get your husband." The woman is like, "Hello, where did that come from?" The woman, being taken off guard, says, "Well, I don't have a husband," and Jesus says, "Yeah, you're right, you don't have one. You've had five, and the one you're with right now isn't even your husband."

Can you imagine how much of an awkward situation that must have been? That's probably one conversation you wouldn't want to be a part of. But what Jesus said seemed to be eerily discombobulated. It just felt like it had nothing to do with anything that was going on in the conversation, yet what Jesus was doing was he was dealing with the root cause. He was going back, and he was speaking straight to her heart while she wanted him to speak to what was completely outside of her heart.

This is what we see all throughout the New Testament specifically as it relates to Jesus dealing with very confrontational situations, and that is what you're going to see right now. What you're about to see is an interaction that really sits on a level that is, by some people's assertions, extreme. In reality, what Jesus is doing here is pretty consequential because Jesus is dealing with a heart issue, and I'm actually going to contend that Jesus is not dealing with the heart issue of the woman, the Syrophoenician woman that he's about to have a confrontation with.

He's actually dealing with the heart issue of the people that surround the Syrophoenician woman. I think that's a really important point to bring out, and I think it's critical because again, it's going back to developing an understanding of the root cause before you can bring yourself to the place of dealing with what the actual issues are in front of you. More and more we have to begin to think at that level and develop a deeper understanding of what that looks like.

The only way that any human being can do that is by understanding the word of God, by understanding what God says especially as it relates to human nature, and that's what we're going to get into right now. So let's dig right in. We're going to be in verse 24. That's where we start, and it says this in Mark chapter 7: "And from thence he arose and went into the borders of Tyre and Sidon and entered into a house and would have no man know it, but he could not be hid."

No matter where Jesus went, everybody knew where he was, and that was becoming more and more obvious of a thing. The crowds followed Jesus. Jesus had hope; he was giving them hope. It was something that they were all looking for, so it should make a lot of sense that there was no way at all that he could be hidden. He was just being hammered again and again. Look what it goes on to say: "For a certain woman whose young daughter had an unclean spirit heard of him and came and fell at his feet."

"The woman was a Greek, a Syrophoenician by nation, and she besought him that he would cast forth the devil out of her daughter." Now, a couple of interesting things that we should probably note. They are critically important to note here. Number one, of course, she was Syrophoenician. Being Syrophoenician, she basically came out of an area that was very, very hated by the Jews on a lot of levels. As a matter of fact, the area that she came from would have likely been associated with the same area that Jezebel had come from, quite frankly.

So it's kind of an interesting fact to think about. There's a lot of back and forth regarding that. We're not going to get much into the historicity of all of that and what all of that means because I think that is inconsequential compared to the story. But the one thing that I do want to point out is I want to point out that it was highly unlikely that a Grecian woman, specifically a Syrophoenician woman, would ever go to a Jewish rabbi to solve a problem, a very burdensome problem that had existed with something or somebody that was very dear to her.

But what's really unique is that she had a moment in the interaction with her daughter at some point—we don't know what that point was—where she realized that the illness that her daughter was experiencing was one that was based on a spiritual contagion. She knew that it was a spiritual issue. She knew that her daughter was spiritually sick. Because she knew that her daughter was dealing with an ailment that was in essence at the level that very few people could even begin to think about handling, she understood that the only person that she could go to to solve that problem was a Jewish rabbi who her and her whole culture have always stood against from the existence of time as long as she's been alive.

It's very interesting to think about that because I think that one of the things that we forget is the reason why so many people who have put their faith and trust in Jesus Christ did what they actually did is because they got to a point where at some level in one way or another they recognized that the level of their desperation, the desperation that they were experiencing in the moment that they were having, far exceeded the capacity that they had to be able to solve whatever that moment was and knew they had to go to something outside of themselves that was very atypical, very, very different from what they had ever tried in the past.

James Kaddis: They realized that the only way they can find healing to the difficult situation that they find in their lives is by going to the God who created them, who they knew if there was ever a chance that something could be fixed, it would be by going to him. I think that's the way each and every single one of you experienced God for the first time.

At one point, you had to get to the place where you recognized that the condition of whatever ailment you were experiencing in that moment could only be fixed by dealing with something that you were ill-equipped to be able to deal with, something that you did not know how to handle or understand or recognize. And in doing so, it forced you to a place of desperation only to put your faith and trust in something that you weren't quite sure would actually fix the problem, but you did it recognizing it was your only hope.

I think unfortunately, because of the way that sin has wired us, we've kind of put ourselves in that position. We're living in a position right now where we've become so desensitized in the West to spiritual things that oftentimes it requires an element of desperation so deep that the only thing that we could do is to go outside of what our established norms are in seeking resolution, knowing that the established norms will never be able to find the problem to be solved.

Case in point: You ever want to find situations where people are the most sincere in their prayers? Go to hospitals. I'm not kidding. Go to emergency rooms. You want to find people in the most desperate place of their life praying the most sincere prayers that they've ever prayed? Go to some of the most difficult circumstances that people find themselves in. Go visit a foxhole or two. Go spend some time in a war-torn country.

Go anywhere where people are facing levels of desperation where absolutely no conventional solution can solve, and you'll find people very quickly resorting to the God that created them, not even realizing that there's a natural within them tendency to seek that out because of the vacuum that so desperately needs to be filled to find the solution. That's precisely what was going on with this woman. This woman recognized that there was only one solution for her daughter who was dealing with an illness that could only be fixed by the person she was about to speak with.

But Jesus does something very different than what you would expect. You see, he sits down with this woman—or at least stands in front of her—who is clearly in the most desperate place of her life. She is in a place where her daughter is in the worst possible condition, and she makes a request, and Jesus's response to her request is shocking if you don't understand Jesus's MO. It makes no sense if you don't know what Jesus is about.

Look what it says in verse 27: "But Jesus said unto her, 'Let the children first be filled: for it is not meet to take the children's bread, and cast it into the dogs.'" Let's go over what we know about the employment of the term "dogs" in that day because it's critically important. Let's look at the term "dog" in the Grecian mind. If she was Syrophoenician, that meant she was Greek to the core. She would completely understand what the Greek culture was, even as it was slightly modified by the existence of Rome.

She would have understood the deployment of such a term as being not only derogatory but offensive. By the way, Jesus uses a slight variation of the term that would have been received as derogatory, and we'll get into that in just a second. But nonetheless, when you use the term "dog" within a context that Jesus would have used it in, in other words, in association with a woman, that would have been taken with great insult if you were Grecian.

As a matter of fact, this term "dog" was used almost exclusively within the context that you would use if you were to refer to a woman in a derogatory way starting with the letter B. It was that harsh. It was not a term that was an easy term to use. If you were Jewish, it would have been almost exactly in the same way. It would have been received very much at that level. Jesus here, in all fairness, does not use that exact term.

Jesus actually uses the term "little dogs," which means he's referring to a puppy or a little puppy, which certainly would not have been taken in as derogatory of a form as it would have been taken had Jesus just outright used the regular term for dog. That's a very important point to make. But nonetheless, Jesus is still referring to the Jews as the children at the table and the Gentiles as the puppies under the table, clearly putting the Jews at somewhat of a higher level than the Gentiles.

That sounds harsh, doesn't it? So think about what's going on here. I'll give you a more modern-day vernacular understanding of what's being said here. The woman goes up to Jesus and says, "Jesus, I desperately need your help." Jesus is in the middle of a lot of things. "I need your help; my daughter's a mess." Jesus says, "Look, you guys are Gentiles. I'm here, and I'm dealing with the Jews. I'm never, ever going to not feed my children for the sake of feeding a little puppy under the table. It's not going to happen."

I promise you that what Jesus said in that moment was something that was designed to catch the ears of all of the Pharisees that were following him around.

Guest (Female): This is Light on the Hill with Pastor James Kaddis, and we're currently going through the Gospel of Mark. Listen to this study and more at lightonthehillradio.com. Pastor James's teachings are also available through the Light on the Hill app and at onplace.com. You can listen to us wherever you get your podcasts as well. When you have a moment sometime today, send us an email. We'd love it.

It's encouraging to hear what the Lord is doing in our listeners' lives, and it's an opportunity to thank the Lord for what he's doing. There's a place to contact us at our website, lightonthehillradio.com. We've been blessed by the feedback we've received thus far regarding Pastor James's new book, *The Last Book*. If you haven't ordered a copy yet, we'd encourage you to do so.

This guide to Revelation covers the first half of the book, giving you what you need to know about the Rapture and the end times in a clear and concise manner. Request your copy today at lightonthehillradio.com or through Amazon. If God is leading you to support this radio outreach, there's also a place to make a donation at lightonthehillradio.com.

Throughout the week, you can watch our live shows and short videos, many of which relate to Bible prophecy and help you to see current events with a biblical worldview. Look for these at jameskaddis.com. Now to provide some much-needed context to help us better understand what Jesus is getting at, we return to Pastor James.

James Kaddis: Look what it says at the beginning of Mark chapter 7. It says, "Then came together unto him the Pharisees, and certain of the scribes,"—notice the key here—"which came from where? Jerusalem." They came a long way if you're talking about journey by foot. They're following around Jesus to try to entrap him. They're having conversation after conversation after conversation with him.

Look at verse 5; let's skip down to verse 5: "Then the Pharisees and scribes asked him, 'Why walk not thy disciples according to the tradition of the elders, but eat bread with the unwashen hands?'" And then he basically goes on to call them hypocrites. He quotes Isaiah, Isaiah 29 to be specific, talks about the traditions that are driving them. He jumps in verse 9: "Full well ye reject the commandment of God, that ye may keep your own tradition."

"For Moses said, 'Honor thy father and thy mother,' and, 'Whoso curseth father or mother, let him die the death.'" And then he goes on to say, "But yet you use your tradition and your law to actually curse your mother and father, and you do it in the name of the law, acting like you're spiritual when in reality you're being a bunch of hypocrites, and you're actually completely dishonoring the true and living God."

Look what it goes on to say: "When he had called all the people unto him, he said unto them, 'Hearken,'"—this is verse 14—"'hearken unto me every one of you, and understand: there is nothing from without a man, that entering into him can defile him: but the things which come out of him, those are they that defile the man. If any man have ears to hear, let him hear.'" In other words, he was directly repudiating; it was a direct repudiation to all the things that the Pharisees and scribes had confronted him with.

So clearly based on the context, the Pharisees and the scribes are following Jesus. They're following him around everywhere he goes, and they are seeking to entrap him. That's exactly what's going on. So understand that the ears of these scribes and Pharisees would have been awakened by Jesus referring to a Gentile as a little puppy that's in essence sitting under the table of the children who he is referring to as Jews. More from the book of Mark coming up next time on Light on the Hill with Pastor James Kaddis. This listener-supported program is brought to you by Calvary Chapel Signal Hill.

Guest (Male): I have found the peace only comes from you. I have found the joy only comes from you because all I need is you.