Conversation Starters

1. Read Mark 7:1-37.

2. In what ways do we “abandon the command of God to hold on to human tradition (7:8)”?

3. What do we learn about Jesus from his debate with the Pharisees?

4. Why does Jesus initially seem to respond so harshly to the Syrophoenician woman? How might she have felt?

5. Contrast Mark’s portrayal of the Pharisees versus the Syrophoenician woman. How is the way Jesus deals with “outsiders” radically different from what’s normal? What would it look like for you to act similarly?

Title: Jesus Receives
Reference: Mark 7:1-15
Speaker: Jonathan Neef, JonathanN@cckc.church

Jesus's reply sounds shocking to us: "It is not right to take the children's bread and throw it to the dogs". In the Old Testament, the Israelites were often called God's children. Conversely, Jews of Jesus's day would sometimes refer to Gentiles as dogs. Jesus's Jewish disciples might well have nodded along as Jesus spoke. But rather than recoiling at the insult, the woman picks up Jesus's metaphor, "Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters' table". Jesus has just come from the Pharisees, who were trying to teach Jesus a lesson about how his disciples should eat. He's called them "hypocrites"... who have no idea what they're talking about. But this woman understands what the Pharisees could not. She knows she has no right to sit at Jesus's table, and it's precisely those who know they have no right that Jesus welcomes in. ~ Rebecca McLaughlin, Jesus Through the Eyes of Women

– We need a right view of ourselves.

God was giving Zechariah a prophetic vision so that he could see us the way that God sees us. In spite of all our efforts to be made pure, to be good, to be moral, to cleanse ourselves, God sees our hearts, and our hearts are full of filth. All of our morality, all of our good works, don’t really get to the heart, and Zechariah suddenly realized that no matter what we do we’re unfit for the presence of God. ~ Tim Keller, Kings Cross

– We need a right view of our Savior.

– We need a right way of approaching.