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Just Be Quiet #2

The Truth Pulpit / Don Green
The Truth Network Radio
January 21, 2025 7:00 am

Just Be Quiet #2

The Truth Pulpit / Don Green

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January 21, 2025 7:00 am

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Welcome to The Truth Pulpit with Don Green, Founding Pastor of Truth Community Church in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Hello again, I'm Bill Wright. It is our joy to continue our commitment to teaching God's people God's Word. Today Don is continuing with the second part of a message we started last time.

So let's get right to it. Open your Bible as we join Don now in The Truth Pulpit. We've seen the reality of dogs and hogs.

Secondly, we want to talk about the response to dogs and hogs. And by the way, just by way of context and dealing with the ridiculous way that unbelievers will handle the Word of God when you speak to anything about them, about sin or coming judgment. And they say, well, the Bible says judge not. And so you need to stop talking and judge not because Jesus said, Jesus himself said judge not.

Well, look, we've already dealt with, here from this pulpit, we've already dealt with extensively why that is a false interpretation of what Jesus is saying here. But what you and I need to understand and read in context is that as soon as Jesus is finished talking about judging not, he goes and he tells us to make a judgment, to recognize that there are men who are dogs, men who are pigs. And we have to make discriminating judgments in order to obey what Jesus says here. We don't view all men the same.

We assess their conduct, we assess their character, and we respond accordingly. That requires discernment and judgments, as we've said many times before. And so what Jesus is doing here in verse six is he is teaching us the proper way to respond to hostility to the gospel with an easily understood illustration. Look at it again there in verse six with me. He says, do not give dogs what is holy.

Do not throw your pearls before swine. We want to focus on that which is holy, the pearls here at this point in the message. For something to be holy is that which is sacred and set apart for God. The truth of scripture, the person of Christ, the gospel of the promise of forgiveness of sin to those who repent and believe. These things are eternally sacred. These things are set apart. These are distinct and different from the world that come from God, not from below.

This is the revelation of God, the goodness of God in a way that our fallen world knows nothing about. Pearls were precious jewels of great, great value. What Jesus is doing by these terms of that which is holy, the idea of pearls, is he is comparing truth to these things of great value.

These things which are set apart and to be honored in the way that they're handled. You may remember when they were carrying the ark to the city of David. They weren't carrying it properly, they just had it set on an ox cart. The oxen stumbled and Uzziah reached out to secure the ark and to keep it from falling and God struck him dead. That ark was holy.

It was not to be treated like a common box falling off the cart. You don't just reach out and grab that. You don't just take your sinful hands and lay hold of that which is holy. And God enforced upon the minds of his people by striking Uzziah dead. I think I'm getting that name wrong, but you know who I'm talking about.

Uzziah was the king. I can't remember the name of who I'm thinking about right at the moment, but that's okay. You know the event. You don't just take your sinful hands and lay it on the holy ark of God.

What are you doing? You're gone. And see, in our sissified evangelical church, we don't like to think that way. And in so doing, we've lost the fear of God.

We've lost our respect for things which are holy. And Jesus teaches us to think differently. These truths are precious. Jesus refers elsewhere in Matthew to the gospel and the kingdom with these lofty illustrations. In Matthew 13, he says the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls who on finding one pearl of great value went and sold all that he had and bought it. And so this gospel of the kingdom is something that is worth giving all that you have and surrendering everything about your possessions and your very self in order to obtain it.

That's how greatly valuable it is. And so he's using the idea of holiness and pearls to express and to refer to truth and the great value of truth. Now, remembering what the dogs and pigs were like in that day, contemptible, brutish, aggressive animals, here's the point.

And I love the simplicity of it. When you peel through it all and you get to the bottom of it, common sense tells you that you would not set things of great value before animals like that. Jesus said, don't put your pearls before swine. If a pig thinks that you're giving him food and then he gets pearls in his mouth, he's not going to say, oh, precious pearls. He's going to be angry that you gave him something that wasn't edible and he'll turn and attack you out of the anger that his animal nature requires. They treat pearls like slop and then they turn on the owner who gave them to him.

Everybody knows you wouldn't do that. You wouldn't lay your diamond wedding ring, set it outside for any animal to come by and desecrate. And so it's obvious that you wouldn't put things of value in front of contemptible animals.

Now, beloved, he's not talking about animals and literal pearls here and no more. He's using that as an illustration of the great value of the truth. And think about it from our perspective today, 2,000 years later. Think of the great value of our message. We testify to anyone that will hear that God demonstrates his own love for us and that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.

A savior of infinite worth, a sacrifice of infinite worth offered to sinners who have souls of infinite worth with infinite consequences and infinite blessing to those who will receive that promised son. That truth, beloved, that truth is sacred. That truth is holy. That's the most important truth in the universe that a sinner could ever hear. And it should never, ever be treated with contempt. It should never be the object of the scorn of an angry, bitter man in a church or from an arrogant, boastful woman in a private conversation with someone who's merely trying to love her soul and share truth with her.

No, our dear Lord shed his precious blood for sinners. And what you and I are responsible to do, and what true believers when properly taught understand and develop in their affections is this. True believers have an earnestness about that truth. They are protective of that great truth.

They react against error. They react against philosophies of ministry that diminish it and make it a matter of entertainment or frivolity. True believers understand that that's not what you do with something of infinite worth. If you have a pearl of great price, if you have a great, perfect, weighty diamond, you put that in a place where it is honored and respected and protected.

You don't just throw that out like it's some common birthday balloon. We care about that, even if no one else does around us. But arrogant scoffers, they don't see it that way. They don't treat it that way. They'll mock it.

They'll twist it. And many of us know by sad, direct, personal experience that even those who would have, you would think, a natural sense of human love for us in our relationships when we speak of these things, they'll attack us. They'll reject us. They'll separate from us, or they'll scorn us with all kinds of derogatory language, either arrogant dismissal as if we were too lowly for them, the truth was not a matter of concern for them, or whatever.

Beloved, you know the people I'm talking about. They blaspheme Christ. They scorn Scripture. They scorn the gospel.

Now the question is, what do you do when that character is obvious? We're not talking about someone who in a heat of passion one time says something and then maybe comes back and apologizes for it. We're not talking about someone who's simply an unbeliever. We're talking about someone who has manifested over time a hostility and contempt for the truth, and they are unapproachable and irreconcilable in that condition.

What do you do then? The point of what Jesus is saying here is, you stop giving them the gospel. You stay quiet on the issue of spiritual things, or you simply walk away. Either literally walk away, or you retreat a bit from the relationship in order not to provoke these opportunities for people to treat Christ and the gospel with contempt.

I've had to do that in times past. It's sad. There's no delight in this response.

There's no joy in this except the joy of obedience and recognizing that we want to be faithful to Christ more than anything else. And so, beloved, what this means is you don't argue with the angry. You don't pander the arrogant, like that pastor did so long ago.

You zip it. You step back. And in obedience to Christ, you leave them to their contempt, and thereby you protect the gospel. You protect the name of our Lord Jesus from being exposed to satanic scorn. There's times for the demons to be silent and to not give them the platform to sully and despise that which is precious. That's the end of section two. So we've seen the reality of dogs and hogs.

We've seen the response to dogs and hogs. You stay silent. You move away. Now, that is so contrary to the prevailing spirit of the frivolous nature of the church these days and possibly runs against the grain of the hearts of tender-hearted people even within the room.

That's not what I would have expected to do. I want to show you from other parts of Scripture that this is exactly what Jesus is teaching. And so we come to the third aspect here, the biblical illustrations, the third section, third and final section of today's message. Some biblical illustrations to help us see that this is exactly what Jesus is teaching. Now, remember, it's helpful to remember principles of interpretation of Scripture. If you have a portion of Scripture that is perhaps a little bit obscure, a little bit difficult to interpret, there's not a whole lot in the context to expand on what it means, well, then you go to other parts of Scripture that would help you understand, that throw greater light on it. All of Scripture comes from the one mind of God, comes from the one Spirit who operated in the human authors to produce a unified system of truth. And so if we come to a difficult passage of interpretation, and this is Matthew 7.6 I would put in that class, well, then we want to go and test our understanding by what we see elsewhere in the Bible to see if it's consistent. Are there things in the same book of the Bible that that verse appears in that might give us room to understand? What about other parts of Scripture? I'm going to take you to three different passages to help us see that the New Testament verifies our understanding of today's text. So turn to Matthew 10, just three chapters after Jesus said this. Jesus is giving instruction to his disciples as they are about to go out and proclaim the kingdom. And he says to them in verse 11, Whatever town or village you enter, find out who is worthy in it, and stay there until you depart.

As you enter the house, greet it. And if the house is worthy, let your peace come upon it. But if not, if it is not worthy, let your peace return to you. Verse 14, here you go. And if anyone will not receive you or listen to your words, shake off the dust from your feet when you leave that house or town. Disassociate yourself from it, in other words.

Verse 15, truly I say to you, it will be more bearable on the day of judgment for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah than for that town. And so he tells his disciples that if they won't receive you, leave them to the point that you shake out your, shake out your robe so that even the dust of that place doesn't cling to you that much of the separation. Don't stay and argue with them.

If they won't hear you, go, leave, go, go someplace where they will. That's the point. And then as you go into the early church, the life of the early church, you'll find that the apostles help us understand what Jesus is describing. We see living illustrations by the appointed representatives of Christ of the very thing that we're talking about here.

Go to Acts chapter 13, Acts chapter 13, beginning in verse 44, Acts 13 verse 44. The next Sabbath, almost the whole city gathered to hear the word of the Lord. But when the Jews saw the crowds, they were filled with jealousy and began to contradict what was spoken by Paul reviling him. Notice what they were doing. They were contradicting the truth. They were reviling the messenger of the truth. And so they were acting like dogs and hogs in response to that which is precious.

And this is a defining moment here. Verse 46, Paul and Barnabas spoke out boldly, saying to the Jews, it was necessary that the word of God be spoken first to you, since you thrust it aside, since because you won't have it, you oppose it, since you judge yourselves unworthy of eternal life, behold, we are turning to the Gentiles. If you're going to act like this, we're going to act like this. If you're going to be hostile and revile the truth, you'll stop hearing it. You've declared you're unworthy of these things of great value, and therefore we will turn our backs on you and we'll go to the Gentiles who will receive us. Verse 47, for so the Lord has commanded us, saying, I have made you a light for the Gentiles that you may bring salvation to the ends of the earth. And when the Gentiles heard this, they began rejoicing and glorifying the word of the Lord and as many as were appointed to eternal life believed. Paul and Barnabas responded to that hostility to the truth, that hostility to them as messengers of Christ, walked away from them, went to someone else.

They didn't stay and argue or try to persuade them any further. The Jews had established their character and made it plain their opposition, and the response was to leave and go someplace else, to not continue to give that holy gospel to the pigs who would attack it. This is now in Acts chapter 18, in a briefer portion of scripture. We read in Acts chapter 18, verse 4, Paul reasoned.

I'll give you a moment to turn there. Acts 18, verse 4, Paul was reasoning in the synagogue every Sabbath and tried to persuade Jews and Greeks. When Silas and Timothy arrived from Macedonia, Paul was occupied with the word, testifying to the Jews that the Christ was Jesus. Now we'll look at this in verse 6. And when they opposed and reviled him, he shook out his garments and said to them, Blood be on your own heads. I am innocent.

From now on I will go to the Gentiles. You revile the gospel. You attack the messenger. You are implacable in your opposition. You are resistant.

You are hard. You have proven this over time. You won't listen to reason. You'll respond with such hostility and arrogance and disgust to these things that are precious. Fine. Have it your way.

I'm going to go someplace else and I'll find people that will listen and the Lord will bring grace to them that apparently he has withheld from you. The point being that malicious men and malicious women reach a point where they forfeit their privilege to hear the truth from us. Now, we have to be precise here.

We have to be really precise here. Simply because someone is not a Christian, they're not a believer right now, that does not mean that someone should be considered a dog and a hog. If every unbeliever was a dog and a hog and we obeyed this verse, then we would stop preaching the gospel altogether.

That's absurd. That's obviously not what Jesus is talking about. Besides, you and I, we were all in that position once where we were unbelievers, some of us openly resistant to the gospel, some of us to our shame having blasphemed the name of Jesus with our own tongues. I think of Cranmer who recanted his faith and then he went back to the faith and they put him on the stake and he was burning and he said, I've got to put my hand in the fire that wrote my initial recantation.

He put his hand in the fire and he said, let that burn first. And so the point is, at this point, is that we understand that there are times, you know, we're born into sin. We're born into, we're naturally unbelievers. No, the church, we go to unbelievers. We make disciples wherever we can. And in the course of those interactions, there will be some who are so hostile, so vile in their response that we say, enough.

And you move on to other things. And by our silence, we protect the truth. And by our silence, there is like a preliminary pronouncement of judgment against them that act as a warning to them for their rejection of the gospel.

And so we need some balance here. Charles Spurgeon said this with exquisite balance in what he says. He says, do not consider men from the start to be dogs or swine, but when they show themselves to be such, do not put occasions in their way for them to display their evil character. Christians are not to be simpletons. They are not to be judges, but also they are not to be fools, end quote. Now, as we close here, let me just give you a couple of practical ways to respond to this truth.

We're not going to come back to this text. First of all, in light of the example of the apostles, this teaching of Jesus and just the practical realities that our days are brief, I encourage you to first of all concentrate your efforts of ministry on those who are receptive to you rather than chasing after those who are not. If someone doesn't want to hear you and that's established over time repetitively, you can respect their decision and look to find those who will receive you. This is a principle that pastors should really, really heed because you can waste 90% of your time on 10% of the people who have no intention of ever listening to you. Why not flip that?

Why not give 90% of our time to people who want the ministry, who want to receive? That's going to go somewhere. And so, beloved, I just encourage you, even if it's a loved one, to beware of spending your life. Every word on what I'm about to say is important here. Beware of spending your life and your best energy on demonstrably hardened hearts. Beware of that. And Jesus would protect you from the vile responses that many will make against you and the lies that people will speak.

You don't have to keep doing that. If one person will hear you and another has shown that he's going to resist you, give yourself to the one who will receive you. That's what the apostles did. That's what Jesus teaches us.

This gives us a sense of the strategic value of using our limited time and resources to the most strategic advantage that we can. Now, secondly, alongside of that, and this is kind of a corresponding balance to the whole overall message, be slow. Be patient before you judge someone as a dog or a hog in the sense that we're speaking about here this morning. Don't be in a hurry to do that.

Don't rush into that. And if you just think about the context here, Matthew 7 verses 1 through 6, Jesus gives five verses about warning us against a critical spirit and only one on how to deal with wicked people. That ratio, it's almost an 80-20 ratio, that ratio warns you where your greater danger lies. You're in greater danger of being overly critical than you are of this other risk, but the other risk does exist. And so if a man, a woman, rejects Christ as you share the gospel with them, but he does it in a civil way, says, that's not for me, I'm not interested in that right now, you can respect that, but keep up the relationship.

There's no reason to separate if somebody is civil about it, courteous about it. Another thing to remember is this, beloved, and it's certainly I'm a living example of what I'm about to say. Remember that some people will change over time, where the Lord has withheld his spirit in one season of life, but now he brings the Word on that life, that resistant life, and the heart begins to change, and there's a new softness, a new receptivity that becomes aware. You know, be willing to adjust as the person adjusts, and be mindful of that. Some people change over time because, beloved, and this is our hope, this is our hope as we say, boy, that person is just a dog, as Jesus described it.

I can't keep talking to them. And yet, let that be provisional, let that be something that you're willing to change if you see a change in the person around you. That's the great balance to it, because by the work of the Holy Spirit, the person who scorns it today might be the person who wants it tomorrow.

At the start, the thief on the cross insulted Christ, but by the end, he asked Jesus to remember him in paradise. The Spirit can change hearts, but until you see evidence of that when somebody's been so demonstratively hostile, just be quiet. Now look, these are difficult issues, and what I would encourage those of you that are associated with our church, what I would encourage you to do if you're dealing with situations like that, you don't have to make that decision, that judgment on your own. Indeed, you really shouldn't.

Talk with your elders. Say, here's the situation, what do you think? Should I keep talking or should I not? You know, and together we'll come together, we'll pray together, we'll see what the Lord has, and you don't have to weigh these important matters by yourself. You know, let others speak into it, because these are difficult issues, and yet they're key to the way that we walk in this world with unredeemed men. I'll close with these words from Spurgeon that are in the form of a prayer. Spurgeon says, great King, how much wisdom your precepts require.

I need thee not only to open my mouth, but also at times to keep it shut. Let's stand as I close in prayer, and Larry will come and lead us. Father, we have no desire to see resistant men cut themselves off from the truth of the gospel.

Our hearts go out in love. We were redeemed from a resistant life ourselves. We don't want to see men cut themselves off from Christ, and yet, Father, we need to be obedient to Christ and wise as we go about, innocent as dove, wise as serpents. So help us, Father.

Certainly every person, every true Christian in here has wrestled with this tension and has felt the weight of hostility that Christ himself first endured in his days on earth. Give us wisdom to navigate it according to your word. And Father, for those who are in the room who are actually resistant themselves or listening on the live stream, resistant themselves, Father, we ask for a work of your Holy Spirit to soften that hard heart, that they might be led to Christ as you one day led us to Christ. We commit it all to you in Jesus' name.

Amen. My friend, I want to let you know of a special ministry that we have at thetruthpulpit.com that's very near to my heart. We have a ministry to those who are in prison.

And in the nature of life, sometimes we have loved ones that go astray and find themselves behind bars and spending significant time in incarceration. Well, we have a ministry to them. We send them transcripts of messages that I've preached from the Pulpit of Truth Community Church. We do it on a weekly basis.

They get mail every week. If you have a loved one in prison that you would like to have us reach out to in that way, do me a favor. Go to our website, thetruthpulpit.com. That's thetruthpulpit.com. Click on the link that says About, and you'll see a drop-down menu that will take you to our prison ministry.

You can fill out the form, and we'll be happy to respond and then join in with you in ministering to that one who is outside the normal course of society. So that's thetruthpulpit.com. The About link for our prison ministry.

That will do it for today. 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.
Whisper: medium.en / 2025-01-21 04:05:36 / 2025-01-21 04:16:35 / 11

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