Sermon Recap
You Can’t Say That About Women, Jesus.
Part 3 of 3 in Jesus Would Get Canceled for That
Parte 3 de 3 de la serie Jesus Would Get Canceled for That
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Brian Hunter · August 23, 2026
“Leaving that place, Jesus withdrew to the region of Tyre and Sidon. A Canaanite woman from that vicinity came to him crying out, ‘Lord, Son of David, have mercy on me…’ He replied, ‘It is not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to the dogs.’ ‘Yes, Lord,’ she said, ‘even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table.’ Then Jesus said to her, ‘Woman, you have great faith! Your request is granted.’”
Scripture Referenced
Recap
Week three of “Jesus Would Get Canceled for That” landed on the hardest text yet: Jesus calling a Gentile woman a dog. Brian had someone in the crowd read Matthew 15:21-28 cold, then asked the room to sit in the discomfort before explaining it away.
The context matters: Jesus is on foreign soil, deep in Gentile territory, and the woman asking him for help has no claim on him by nationality, religion, or gender: in that culture, all three worked against her. On the surface, Jesus ignores her, then seems to insult her. But Jesus routinely hid what he was doing behind things that looked offensive on the surface, because he wasn’t performing for a crowd’s approval. He was after something deeper.
She doesn’t leave, and she doesn’t back down, she takes his own line and turns it into an argument for herself: even the dogs get the crumbs. And Jesus’s response isn’t rejection, it’s the opposite: “Woman, you have great faith.” A phrase he doesn’t hand out to people who are supposed to have it easy. The woman with every cultural strike against her walks away with the highest commendation Jesus gives anyone in the Gospels.
Touch Points
- What’s your honest first reaction to Jesus calling this woman a dog, before you know the rest of the story?
- Where have you mistaken Jesus being silent or slow to answer for Jesus being absent?
- The woman kept pressing even after an insult. What keeps you from pressing further with God when the first answer feels like a no?
- Who in your life gets treated like an outsider the way this woman was, and what would it look like to see them the way Jesus did?