The Gospel of Mark tells us that as Jesus encountered people and minister to them that He did it in unique and marvelous ways. I want to point out two stories that show Jesus does all things well.In the first story, Jesus delt with a Gentile mother and her daughter who was demon possessed (Mark 7:24-30). Jesus had been in and around the region of the Sea of Galilee, but He was on the eastern side where He had healed a demon possessed man, and the people reacted in fear and asked Him to leave. So Jesus decided to go to the area of Tyre and Sidon, the old Phoenicia.Now Jesus had begun to teach that the distinctions between clean and unclean were being removed and cast aside (Mark 7:1423). So as He goes into Gentile territory He enters a house to stay, which probably was a house of a Gentle, and this would reinforce His teaching that He was rejecting the “clean and unclean” standard. Mark tells us that He did not want anyone to know where He was, but that was impossible as the knowledge about Him preceded Him.Then this Gentile mother came in begging that her daughter be healed from a demon. She had heard about Jesus and believed that Jesus could do this. Jesus’ response to her plea was “Let the children be fed first, because it isn’t right to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs” (Mk. 7:27). His answer was not an insult as He was saying that He mission was to show to the Jews first.It is interesting because this Gentile mother understood what Jesus was doing, but suggested that even the “dogs” get some table scraps. This is remarkable in that she understood that there was something in Jesus’ purpose that would be for the Gentiles. Because of this reply of faith Jesus healed her daughter (Mk. 7:2930).Now in the second stoiy, Jesus went back to the eastern side of the Sea of Galilee, to the region of the Decapolis, where these people were most likely Gentiles. They brought to Jesus a man who was deaf and had a speech impediment (Mk. 7:31-32). It had been perhaps a few months since He was asked to leave this region because He had cast out a legion of demons from a man and sent them into the herd of pigs who ...
