Welcome to The Truth Pulpit with Don Green, Founding Pastor of Truth Community Church in Cincinnati, Ohio. Hello, I'm Bill Wright. Thanks for joining us as we continue teaching God's people God's Word.
Don begins a new message today, so without further delay, let's join him right now in The Truth Pulpit. When I was a little boy, my dear mother took me to a small country church on a pretty consistent basis. I have fond memories of that place. It was an old wooden frame building, which did not even have running water at the time.
There were outhouses in back for those kinds of things. By modern standards, it was a little bit of a primitive setting, but there were a group of people that gathered in the name of Christ in order to sing and pray together and hear the Word of God. That's where Brother Jim Harley was that I alluded to at the beginning. He was at that church, not when I was old enough to remember. But one Sunday, when I was old enough to remember, I remember being in the worship service in a room that was maybe a third of the size of this room that we're in right now.
So it's kind of a close, intimate setting. One Sunday, there was a man there. I remember this so clearly. He was not a Christian, and he wanted everyone to know that he was not a Christian. He slouched in his seat and slung his left leg, I believe it was, dangling over the seat in front of him and had the audacity to light his pipe and smoke his pipe in that position while the service was ongoing.
I don't know that I've ever seen anything like that before or since. If someone did that here today, our security would quickly escort them out of the building, so don't get any ideas. My point is, is that man held everything around him in contempt. He showed no respect whatsoever for the gathering of Christians, no respect for the Word of God, and it wasn't simply a negative failure to show respect. It was a positive demonstration of the utmost hostility toward the midst of what he was sitting in that really could possibly be imagined.
It's the same spirit that leads people to come in and shoot up a church, as has happened in our day more recently. Now, that man is not the point of why I say this and why I introduce that story. It's to talk about how the pastor handled it, and I sympathize with the pastor.
When you're in a public place and something unexpected happens and you've got to respond in the moment, it's not easy. But that overmatched pastor did not rise to the occasion, in my opinion, and I say this with sorrow and with sympathy for him. He's long departed and buried in the state of Indiana. His response was to try to flatter the man. He said, oh, this is not his real name, he said, oh, it's good to have Greg with us today, while Greg was sitting there in that place of utter contempt for everything that that pastor professed to represent. Now, my friends, I want to tell you, and will support what I'm about to say from Scripture over the next 50 minutes or so, that man in the pew was obviously wrong for what he did. We don't even need to consider that. But I want to help you understand today that that pastor was also wrong in trying to show kindness to him under those circumstances.
He should not have catered to that hostile man if at best or at the very least he should have ignored him. And why do I say that? Well, it ties in with our text today. But before we get to the text, I just want you to think about what it is that we have in Christ, what we have in the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, and that it is something that is very, very precious. It is eternally and highly valuable. The epistle of 1 Peter chapter 1 says that we as Christians have been redeemed with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot. When we think of who our Savior is, the eternal Son of God, humbled Himself to come to earth and to be born of a virgin and laid in a manger, to live for 33 years a perfect life while He's enduring the hostility and taunts of men, knowing that ultimately He would go to the cross and suffer the cruelest of deaths on behalf of His people, that He would be exposed and mocked while He hung there, and then His Father's face would turn away from Him as all of the sins of His people were laid upon Him and He bore the stroke on their behalf, that He would be removed from that cross and laid in a grave before He burst forth in the resurrection, a resurrection which proved His power, which proved His deity, which proved that His sacrifice on behalf of His people had been accepted, and all this in accordance with the eternal plan of God, the plan of God agreed upon in the councils of the Trinity before time began, all of this is high and lofty and holy and precious truth, and it is the truth by which we are saved, it is the truth by which it is the only truth by which any man can be saved from his sins, and thereby pass from death to life, from judgment into acceptance, to avoid the screaming howling demons and smoke and fire of hell, which is the just due for all of us, and instead to enter into a world of bliss and perfection, having been adopted into the family of God and accepted by Him forever to enjoy His presence and to behold His glory. Beloved, don't you see that this truth, this rock upon which the church of Jesus Christ is built, that these things are eternally, infinitely of great price, of great value, and therefore are to be respected and protected from that which would diminish them as that misguided man did some 50 years or more ago. Hold those thoughts as we take a moment to turn to Matthew chapter 7 and set the context for our text today.
We have spent two or three messages on the first five verses of Matthew chapter 7, and I want to just read those to reset the context for you. Matthew chapter 7 verse 1, judge not that you be not judged, for with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and with the measure you use it will be measured to you. Why do you see the speck that is in your brother's eye but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, let me take the speck out of your eye when there is the log in your own eye?
You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother's eye. As we've seen, what Jesus is telling us to do as we walk through this world is to guard our hearts. Against a critical judgmental spirit as we walk through life. He calls us to examine our own lives before we confront the sin in the lives of others, and that should produce a gentleness and a humility in us as we walk through life. But now, having finished that, having finished verse 5, now Jesus' teaching is going to take a very interesting turn, almost an unexpected turn with what comes next.
He's given us one aspect of guiding our interactions with sinners around us, but now he's going to give us another perspective to balance that out and to guide our interactions with men. Look at verse 6, which is our text for this morning. Matthew chapter 7 verse 6 for our text, and the title of today's message is, Just Be Quiet. Just Be Quiet is the title of today's message coming from Matthew chapter 7 verse 6. And our Savior who said, Judge not, that you be not judged, immediately following also said this, which we read in verse 6, Do not give dogs what is holy, and do not throw your pearls before pigs, lest they trample them underfoot and turn to attack you. That's a common phrase. This is something that's even, you know, that circulates in the common mindset of society, you know, don't throw your pearls before swine.
There's even a comic strip that goes by that name. And so these are, in one sense, familiar words of Jesus. But the question that we want to ask and answer here today is this, why did Jesus say that? And why did he say it here?
And what exactly does it mean? Well, in summary form, beloved, what this verse is teaching us is this, as you guard while you are careful to avoid a judgmental spirit, as Jesus told us to do in the first five verses of Matthew chapter 7, while you're doing that, at the same time, there is something else that you also need to be mindful of and to do. What you are to do is this, you are not to give precious truth to people who will abuse it. You have to realize that there are enemies of God who delight in abusing gospel truth, who delight in blaspheming the fair name of the rose of Sharon, the lily of the valley, the Lord, our Lord Jesus Christ.
There are people like that. And what we are to do is to understand that there is a distinct way that we recognize people like that and a distinct instruction from our Lord in how we are to respond to them. And I dare say, I dare say that this is going to be very practical and helpful truth for you in many of your personal relationships and in those difficult family situations where people that you love on a human level are hostile to your faith and argumentative or dismissive of that or all of that spirit. It's just so contrary to the value, the preciousness of what we know and what we believe and the eternal value of the Word of God. We need to be able to, we need to know how to respond to that, to people like that.
And it's not simply a half-drunk uncle at the Thanksgiving table to which this applies. This would apply equally to people of high academic standing who despise the gospel and undermine confidence in the Word of God and by their teachings and their actions manifest their hostility to the truth. And so it's not simply a belligerent person but also people who have a settled pattern of undermining and opposing the truth.
We need to know how to deal with people like that. Now the prevailing spirit, in my judgment, the prevailing spirit in the broader evangelical church is that we just need to be kind to absolutely everyone in an unqualified sense, that we should always be looking for every opportunity to preach Jesus to absolutely everyone under every circumstance. And beloved, what we're going to see clearly from Scripture is that's not the case, that there is a call to discernment in the Word of God. And there is a call to discrimination in the way that we handle the Word of God, who we share it with and who we might withdraw from sharing it with.
And that's the purpose of Matthew chapter 7 verse 6, and we'll see it illustrated in the life of the early church before we are done here today. And so what I want to do, what I want to do is give you three sections to today's message. First of all, we want to talk about the reality of dogs and hogs, the reality of dogs and hogs.
Secondly, we want to talk about our response to dogs and hogs. And then thirdly, I want to take you and give you some biblical illustrations of the principles that are there about these points, and then we'll close with a couple of practical applications. But the overall prevailing message from Jesus here today is that we are not, as His people, we are not to give His Word to people who have shown that they intend to abuse it.
And that gives us great clarity and comfort as we go forward. Let's talk first of all about the reality of dogs and hogs. Let's look at verse 6 again. Jesus says, Do not give dogs what is holy, and do not throw your pearls before pigs, lest they trample them underfoot and turn to attack you. Now the form of the command gives a sense of don't ever do this.
Don't even start to do this. He's not talking about something that's happening and then you stop doing it because you're in the midst of it. It's got the idea of don't even start to do what I'm about to address here. And so He talks about dogs and pigs, and it's almost jarring after He's been talking about judgment and logs and specks and all of that, it's almost jarring to have these animals introduced into the text right now. And some people, some commentators, to say this was just, Matthew just inserted this, it's not, we don't know why it's there, it just happens to be there, but it has no connection to anything before or after, and that's the way, beloved, that's the way academics, many academics will treat the Word of God and just cut it up and say this doesn't make any sense in the context, you know, and so we just need to deal with it the best that we can.
A pox on all of them. Of course there's understanding, and of course there's a sense of context, and of course it builds on what Jesus was saying. He was the master teacher. The Bible is inspired by the Word of God. The apostle Matthew was guided by the Holy Spirit in what he wrote. So of course there is a meaning and a context and a connection for us to discover, and I just, I have no patience for men who treat the Word of God in such a cavalier fashion and undermine confidence and denigrate the Word of God.
I have no use for men like that whatsoever. And so what is Jesus saying here? Well first of all, let me clarify something about the animals, the dogs and the pigs that Jesus talks about here. Those of you that like dogs and appreciate dogs and have dogs, you can have them, that's okay, but I want you to know that in this first century context, Jesus was not referring to the domesticated pets that we associate dogs, the term dogs with. He's not talking about modern household pets as we have them today. The dogs that Jesus had in mind were ugly, half wild scavenger animals that were known for their love for filth and their association with dirty things. If you think about a wild scavenger coyote prowling about, you have a little bit better picture than thinking about Fluffy and your Chihuahua or whatever.
That's the distinction, not a Chihuahua, not a cute puppy in the store. Jesus is talking about something that more approaches a prowling coyote that's just going to get into the garbage and destroy things. In Scripture, Scripture associates dogs with reproach and contempt and loathing. To illustrate that point just briefly, turn over to Philippians chapter 3, I just want you to see this, to have a sense of this. As Philippians chapter 3, as Paul is referring to false teachers who distort the gospel, he refers to them in this way, chapter 2, he says, look out for the dogs.
Look out for the evildoers. Look out for those who mutilate the flesh. And in Revelation 22, I'm stepping out here a little bit, Revelation, you don't need to turn there, but in Revelation 22 verse 15, we read about heaven, outside are the dogs and the sorcerers and the sexually immoral and murderers and idolaters and everyone who loves and practices falsehood. Dogs in Scripture are associated with that which is contemptible. Dogs are associated with that which is unclean.
That's the point that I want you to see. So it's very important, especially for you animal lovers in the room, it's very important to drive a wedge between your affection for your pets and what Jesus is talking about here. Dogs in Scripture has a negative connotation that modern pet lovers do not have.
Again, the idea of a dog is contempt and reproach and loathing. Now pigs were no better. As you know, pigs were unclean animals to Jews. The pigs were wild beasts that were capable of savage action and attacking those who would be around them, you could say. And so when Jesus is talking about dogs and pigs, he's using a collective picture to speak about animals who were unclean, filthy, and aggressive against the things that are around them. And in the spirit of that brute beast life, that brutish approach to things, it's obvious, beloved.
And here's the point, we're kind of transitioning now into what we're wanting to communicate here today. It's obvious that dogs and pigs have no aesthetic appreciation for things of value. They do not appreciate finer things, they treat everything equally in accordance with their contemptible, vicious, brutish nature. That's how they treat everything, and the audience of Jesus would have understood that implicitly. These animals don't recognize things of value, they have no capacity for cherishing things that are worthwhile, everything is an object of their animal spirit.
And by nature, friends, think about it this way. By nature, those dogs and those pigs degrade everything that's in front of them. You think of the prodigal son wanting to be fed by the, eat the same slop that the pigs were eating.
The whole picture of that is one of filth and destitution of spirit and all of that. And so we should not view these animals, dogs and pigs, we should not view them sympathetically. Jesus is describing them and using them of an illustration of the point that he is trying to make. And what he's saying is, obviously Jesus is not giving us instruction that pertains to his kingdom and going into a side point about what you do with literal animals. He's making a spiritual point here, and what he's saying is he's comparing these contemptible animals with the nature of those who are hostile and settled in their hostility toward the gospel of Jesus Christ, settled in their hostility toward the word of God, settled in their hostility toward the person of Christ. And there are men, and they are increasing in number as we go along, there are men who treat the things that we hold precious with contempt. They will not tolerate an earnest conversation about spiritual things.
They get aggravated, they get angry, they attack you as being foolish or stupid or, you know, whatever, speaking to you arrogantly, you know, why are you such a rube, how could you believe such silly things, and you know the picture, I don't need to expand on it any further. These are men and women who do not cherish the infinite worth of Jesus Christ. And instead of at least being respectful toward these things of eternal worth, they have to attack, they have to denigrate, they have to demean, and all of that.
They mock the gospel, they are aggressively hostile to Christians, and the question that Jesus is answering here in Matthew 7 verse 6 is, how should the disciple of Christ respond to that? Now we're not going to spend a lot of time on the closing clause of the verse, but let me just say here that Jesus as a good shepherd is looking to protect his sheep. He's looking to protect us, to help us, to shield us from that kind of defiling action. And notice that what he says there at the end, don't give dogs what is holy, don't throw your pearls before pigs, lest, he's saying, if you do that, here's what's going to happen, and I want to protect you from that predictable result. He says, lest they trample them underfoot and turn to attack you.
He's protecting us from attack. He's protecting the value of truth, and the perceived value of truth, and by our obedience to our Lord, by our sympathy with all that he teaches, and our submission to his holy will, we want to adopt that same attitude that he expresses to us here. This is part of being a faithful disciple. And I sympathize with those who from their tender hearts think that, oh, if I say it just right, one more time, maybe they'll listen now after being abused mercilessly in prior conversations, and you just think, but if I can just tell, maybe I can persuade them, maybe I can come up with another argument about it, and you just pour yourself into people that have manifested hostility. I'm going to clarify this more down the road, but to just want to keep on talking, when actually it may very well be time to stop talking.
And that's what Jesus is teaching us. Well, my friend, just before we close today's broadcast, I just wanted to give a special word of greeting and thanks to the many people that listen to our podcast internationally. It's remarkable to me, the last report that I saw listed 83 different countries that in one way or another are listening to us. And I just want to send a special word of greeting to those of you that are in lands that are distant from my own home here in the United States.
You know, we've seen people from every continent, except maybe Antarctica, and people from countries like Ireland and Australia and Singapore, Canada, the UK, India, I have friends in all of those countries. And whether you've met me face to face or whether you only know me as a voice through your favorite device, I just want to say, God bless you. Thank you for your interest in the word of God, and may the spirit of God work deeply in your heart as you continue to study God's word. Thank you for being with us. Thank you for your prayers. God bless you. My prayers and love are with you as well. And we'll see you next time on The Truth Pulpit. That's Don Green, founding pastor of Truth Community Church in Cincinnati, Ohio. Thank you so much for listening to The Truth Pulpit. Join us next time for more as we continue teaching God's people God's word.
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