“It’s Not Our Job to Judge the World”
Matthew 7:1-6
Mission Insight is a program that our Holston Conference of the United Methodist Church pays for and makes available to local churches such as ourselves so that we can find out about our community.
The information comes from the census, a number of survey companies, what folks purchase, and even algorithms on computers.
I recently used Mission Insight to study the opinions, beliefs and behaviors of our neighbors here in Red Bank.
According to the information generated, only 27.95% of our neighbors attend a religious congregation.
Just 57.25% believe in God.
And out of the 72.95% of our neighbors who don’t attend a church, 57.47% say that one reason they stay away is that they feel churches are too judgmental.
In light of our Scripture passage for this morning, I wonder what Jesus would say about this.
Would He be disappointed?
Would He be surprised?
Would it make Him sad?
(pause)
Obviously, Matthew 7:1-5 is about judging others, but what about verse 6…
…it sounds kind of weird and cryptic doesn’t it?
“Do not give dogs what is sacred: do not throw your pearls to pigs.
If you do, they may trample them under their feet, and turn and tear you to pieces.”
Dogs and pearls and pigs…
What in the world does Jesus mean by this, and why does He say this right after He admonishes His followers not to judge?
It’s important to know that in Jesus’ day, the Jews often referred to pagan nations—that is non-Jewish nations—as “dogs.”
And that sounds really derogatory and I’m not trying to suggest there wasn’t a negative tone to it, but it was a figure of speech.
You might remember a story that comes up later in the gospels about a Canaanite woman who came up to Jesus, and Jesus was trying to get away for a retreat.
She’s a Gentile and she asks, “Hey will you heal my daughter,” and Jesus is like “It’s not good to take the children’s bread and toss it to the dogs.”
And it sounds like a really harsh thing to say.
But it didn’t have quite the stigma as it might have in our world.
And she totally embraces it and says, “Yes it is, Lord, even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table.”
And Jesus tells her she has great faith, and He heals her daughter.
Dogs and Pigs are interchangeable.
Pigs were the greatest export of the Decapolis (which was Gentile territory).
It’s what they were known for.
And so, to talk about dogs and pigs is in Jesus’s world--a Jewish audience is going to know that He’s talking about Gentiles or pagans—non-believers, non-Jews.
So, then what in the world is He getting at when He says, “Don’t throw pearls before Gentiles”?
Pearls is another Hebrew figure of speech that means teachings, and wisdom.
It’s the Torah, the Hebrew Bible.
It’s rabbinic thought.
It’s the Jewish Law.
That’s pearls.
And so, Jesus is saying don’t throw your morality or your beliefs before people who haven’t signed up to follow them.
In other words, we don’t get to say to the unbelieving world, “This is what the Bible says, so now I’m going to make you to follow it.”
We can’t take the things we believe, the things we stand for and then throw them in front of people who don’t believe in them and expect them to get in line.
You can’t take the Torah and say to the Gentiles, “How dare that you did this because in Leviticus God said not too.”
They will look at you as if you are crazy.
Leviticus isn’t their covenant.
They never agreed to play by those rules.
So, don’t throw your pearls before unbelievers, otherwise, they will turn and tear you to pieces.
It’s just not going to work.
Think about parents and kids—especially kids who are going through adolescence or even college students.
They are sometimes in a phase of life where they are pushing against the boundaries and pushing against the things that their parents have taught them.
Some of this has to do with them trying to figure out who they are and, perhaps some of it is plain rebellion.
The parent’s response is often to start throwing platitudes in front of their kid and what the kid does is the kid often reacts against it.
The child says, “Not only am I not going to do that, I’m going to push against that with everything I have.”
And so, you get the opposite reaction.
And we Christians do this all the time.
We love to talk about our views of morality, good and bad, light and darkness, right and wrong and we expect the world to listen to us.
But why would the world listen to us?
They haven’t agreed to follow the Bible as their measuring stick for their lives.
They haven’t given their lives to Christ.
Again, this teaching is not supposed to carry a derogatory tone.
You can’t throw your teachings before unbelievers and expect them to follow it.
As a matter of fact, it’s quite the opposite.
They might actually respond with hostility.
A friend of mine recently visited Portland, Oregon which is purported to be the most secular city in America.
He told me that the people out there are openly hostile toward Christians.
They even drive around with bumper stickers that have anti-Christian messages.
And it’s because they are pushing back on us.
When the Moral Majority was formed in the early 1980s, that is when the modern world really began to take a negative stance toward Christianity.
And that’s because the Moral Majority was trying to legislate politically their morals as the Law of the Land.
They were trying to force what they believed on everyone else.
They were trying to force unbelievers or even believers who didn’t interpret the Scriptures the way they did to live by their rules.
But these people were like, “I didn’t sign up for this!”
“Or, I don’t think like you.”
So, it doesn’t work.
It only makes people who don’t agree angry.
And it causes them to push against them and do the opposite.
Jesus is telling us not to do this, because the unbelievers will just turn and tear us to pieces or tear our pearls to pieces and we see it happening today—even here in the Bible Belt.
And that does harm to the Gospel of Jesus Christ which is about how much God loves the world and what Jesus did to prove that love.
It doesn’t look loving to when a group is trying to push their agenda onto others.
A number of years ago now, members of a Christian theatre troupe spent nearly $100,000 on a full-page ad in USA today proclaiming: “Enough is Enough.”
What they were upset about involved a woman named Kathy Griffin.
In accepting an Emmy for her reality t-v show, Griffin said that “a lot of people come up here and thank Jesus for this award.
I want you to know that no one had less to do with this award than Jesus.”
She went on to hold up her Emmy and say, “My award is god now!”
Why should Christians be shocked by this?
Why should a Christian expect someone who doesn’t believe to act as if they do?
But what did this Christian group do?
They took out this $100,000 full page ad denouncing Griffin for her remarks.
How do you think that made Christians look to the rest of the world?
Do you think it converted anyone?
Or do you think it made people angry?
Now, does this mean we aren’t supposed to evangelize and try and encourage people to follow Christ?
Not at all.
We are supposed to make disciples of all nations, of all people.
But how do we do this?
Jesus told us to let our light shine so people will see how we love, see our good deeds, so they will see our pearls…
…we aren’t to not throw the pearls at them…
…because they don’t know how to wear the pearls, but we can wear the pearls as a witness.
We can be a city on a hill.
And so, we can build relationships with people, build trust, serve and love--not throw our morality at people, or in the context of our passage for this morning—not judge them!
And this is why Jesus puts this strange, cryptic-sounding verse in here.
This teaching is about judging others.
“Do not judge, or you will be judged.”
In other words, “Do not judge the world or the world will judge you.”
It makes sense.
“For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the same measure you use, it will be measured to you.”
We are to love people into God’s Kingdom.
Judging people doesn’t bring anyone into the kingdom; it actually has the opposite effect—it repels them.
Let’s face it, this world is in chaos.
People are shooting one another.
Wars are breaking out all over the globe.
People are homeless and living on the street.
People are hungry and can’t afford food.
And folks are in despair.
People NEED JESUS!!!
And we’ve got the pearls.
So, let’s wear them.
And wearing them means letting our light shine on them by how differently we live, by how we love and take care of the angry and irritated, how we love and help the homeless and forgotten, and how we give food to those who need a little help from friends, from neighbors.
That’s what gets people’s attention.
“Look at those beautiful pearls.”
“I think I want those pearls as well.”
“I want to wear the pearls.”
“I want to love rather than hate.”
“I want to make this world a better place too.”
“I want to be a Christian too.”
Imagine.
Imagine.
When I was a teenager I met another kid my age who befriended me and at one point asked me if I was a Christian.
I had always gone to church.
I was a believer.
I knew I didn’t live according to what I believed, but I considered myself a Christian.
And so, “I said, ‘Yes. I’m a Christian.”
He never questioned my answer.
But over time, by hanging out with him, by watching how he interacted with other people, and how he lived his life I came to the conclusion that his idea of what a Christian is and my idea were diametrically opposed.
He was living it.
He was wearing the pearls.
And I had never met a person my age who was living it.
And I saw, by him letting his light shine, that it was actually possible to live as a Christian.
And I wanted that.
I wanted to wear those pearls.
And that is what God used to bring me to Christ.
And my life hasn’t been the same since.
I got saved.
There are certain segments of our society that think Christians actually hate them.
It’s how we come across.
(pause)
A few months ago, I was sitting in a Christian small-group when one of the people shared that she has been taking food to a battered woman’s shelter “in the name of Christ and Christ’s Church” for about 20 years.
The same director has worked there all these years and watched what she has done, week after week, year after year.
The last time she brought a car-load of food to the shelter the director came running out to her and excitedly proclaimed, “Emily, I got saved this week!”
People are looking for Christ, but they must see Him in you and in me.
We are the people who are supposed to wear the pearls, not throw them at people.
As His Church, we are His representatives in this world and the world is watching.
When we judge people and seemingly hate them…well, of course, they are going to do the same to us.
“For in the same way you judge others you will be judged.”
So, let’s wear the pearls rather than throwing them at people, and maybe, just maybe…miracle of all miracles…
…they will ask God for some pearls that they can wear as well.
May this be our way of life and our prayer.
In Jesus’ name and for His sake.
Amen.
