The apostle Peter, in the book of Acts, summarises the coming of Christ in the flesh this way…
He says to the Jewish people of his day, ‘God, having raised up His servant, sent him to you first to bless you by turning every one of you from your wickedness.’ That is what Christ wanted to come to this nation that He had set apart—the Church of the Old Testament, as we may refer to it. He came to them first, and this was His practice, as we see Him going about His ministry in the Lord Jesus in the Gospels.
We have an example from Mark Chapter 7 of the Lord Jesus hanging around a more Gentile area called Tyre and Sidon and meeting a woman who was not Jewish. Her little daughter had an unclean spirit, so she came and fell down at the feet of the Lord Jesus. Yet she was a Gentile, a Syro-Phoenician by birth (basically Lebanese), and yet she begged the Lord Jesus to cast the demon out of her daughter.
But the Lord Jesus was very clear. He said, ‘Let the children be fed first, for it is not right to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.’ Now, the Lord Jesus is not seeking to be insulting here; he is merely continuing the preaching that God the Father has done through creation and in the setting out of clean and unclean animals, which preaches about the ones who trusted the Lord were part of Israel, and they are the people to whom the Lord Jesus came—the church. The Jewish people are the children who need to be fed first, and it would not be right to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs, and according to the lessons God was teaching through creation that is the category that gentiles were in…
Remember, dogs are an example of an unclean animal, and the purpose of the unclean animals was to teach the people about the nations, the difference between those who had been set apart and those who had not. Any creature with fangs of violence, and claws of violence were deemed as unclean—those who are not part of the church. So the Lord Jesus says, ‘I can’t help you.’ And yet, the woman can tell that the Lord Jesus wants to know her response. However, he didn’t immediately walk away, it seems, because she answered him, ‘Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.’ So, even pre-Pentecost, the Father was preaching to us through creation; unclean animals, were cared for by God. And in the same way, Gentiles were cared for too.
And so we have throughout the Old Testament those who are Gentiles joining the church, but the way that they joined the church was different pre-Pentecost. They had to become Jewish people; they had to renounce their nations and become fully Jewish. Yet, they could receive help from the Lord, and the same happens here. The Lord Jesus came first to the Jewish people, and yet even here, we have a Gentile woman appealing to the grace of God. The response that Jesus gives to her is as follows, ‘For this statement, you may go your way. The demon has left your daughter.’ And she went home and found the child lying in bed and the demon gone.
