Matthew 7:1 "Do not judge so that you will not be judged. 2 For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you. 3 "Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? 4 How can you say to your brother, 'Let me take the speck out of your eye,' when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? 5 You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye. 6 "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 then turn and tear you to pieces.
Introduction
After everything we have read in the Sermon on the Mount so far, the first three words of verse 6 come as a shock: Do not give…what is holy… Do not give? Jesus has said so much about giving and generosity and pouring yourself out. He said Blessed are the merciful. He said If someone wants to sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well. If someone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles. Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you. He called us to provide salt and light to this world. He told us to love our enemies and imitate God, who gives sunshine and rain to His enemies. He told us to give to the poor, and to have good eyes (which is a metaphor for generosity). He told us to freely give forgiveness. The whole sermon it has been, give, give, give – freely you have received, freely give. And so when we run into these words in verse 6 – Do not give – that is a shock. Especially when you see what it is we are not to give. Do not give … that which is holy… The NIV translates it sacred, but holy and sacred mean the same thing. It is just the common Greek word for holy (hagios). Jesus is actually placing a restriction on the giving of holy things. When I read that I immediately have two huge questions that come to my mind: Who are these people that we are not allowed to give holy things to? Why?
Review
Be careful
Before we answer those questions let’s make sure we are up to speed on the context. We left off last week discussing this matter of helping a brother remove the speck from his eye. Jesus called every one of us to be eye surgeons as we help one another overcome the sins in our hearts. We do that through encouraging one another, strengthening one another, rebuking, exhorting, instructing, comforting, correcting, admonishing, etc. And the shorthand term we use for all that around here is “biblical counseling.” We all want to excel at those things, and I talked about the various resources for doing that – the class I will be teaching starting on the 21st, and CD’s and books that can help you, etc. But the most important ingredients to being an excellent counselor – the way to really be effective in helping remove the speck from your brother’s eye is to have those two all-important virtues: love and humility.
You need love because the soul is a very delicate thing. I think Jesus picked this analogy for a reason. Helping your brother with a sin is not like removing a splinter from his finger; it is like removing a speck from his eye! Have you ever tried to remove something from someone else’s eye? That is a delicate procedure. If someone is going to be touching your eye, you want that to be a person who loves you a lot. If the person is even slightly indifferent toward your wellbeing, you do not want them touching your eye. This is a procedure that requires the utmost care, because the soul is even more sensitive than the eye. So gentleness is the name of the game.
Galatians 6:1 Brothers, if someone is caught by a sin, you who are spiritual should restore him gently.
If you are judging people harshly, unfairly, superficially, unmercifully, or hypocritically then you are going to do more harm than good. You will get the speck out of their eye and cause permanent damage in the process.
“Here, let me help you with that speck in your eye – I’ll just wipe it out of there with this piece of sandpaper.”
“I’ve got a pair of pliers here, let me just help you with that speck in your eye.”
You will be a much better eye surgeon if you know from experience what eye surgery feels like. There won’t be any sarcasm in our voice, no unnecessary harshness, no condescending tone. We are not going to bring it up at a moment when it is going to be hard for them to receive it. We are not going to try to embarrass them or push them into a corner where they will be tempted to be defensive. We will approach them the way we would like to be approached with gentleness and tenderness and compassion – and patience.
Humility
The other key virtue is humility – remove the log from your own eye first. Deal with your own sin. That should just be an automatic reflex any time we ever become critical of anyone. Even if you don’t say anything, and it is just in your thoughts – even then, the moment you feel yourself criticizing someone else you immediately turn the search light on your own heart. Can you imagine how much better life would be if we all just did that? Deal with your sin first, then your brother’s.
Beam removal clarifies vision by making you humble
Remember last week we saw that the very thing that clarifies your vision as an eye surgeon is the removal of the log from your eye? Dealing with your own sin has a clarifying, vision-improving effect because you always have the clearest spiritual eyesight when you are humble. And nothing humbles us like fighting a battle against sin in our lives. When you have enough insight to see the enormity of some sin in your life, and then do whatever wrestling and struggling is required to cast it out – that really gives you some perspective about sin.
People who do not have anything like that fresh in their memory make lousy counselors. They cannot understand why it is so hard for you. If you are struggling with something they don’t struggle with they give you advice that really amounts to, “Just stop doing it. Just stop worrying. Just stop being angry. Just stop that habit.” They will dress it up with some Bible verses that condemn that sin so it sounds like they are giving biblical counsel, but they are long on condemnation and short on instruction. They tell you what you are not supposed to do and what you are supposed to do, but they have very little to say about how. “How do I change my desires? How do I change my thoughts? How do I change my inclinations and moods and feelings and motives?” We who are parents are some of the worst offenders in this. I was listening to Paul Trip the other day and he was making this very point. Your teenager does something irresponsible, and off we go – “When I was your age I never did anything like that. What’s the matter with you? Why didn’t you listen to me? Don’t you know that was a dumb thing to do? Why don’t you be more careful and more thoughtful?” What do you think goes through your teenager’s head when you are saying all that? Do you think he is thinking, “My, this is helpful. I’ve never seen my own heart more clearly, I’ve never been more hopeful about my ability to change”? It is like parents have this innate, uncanny ability to offer unhelpful criticism.
That comes from a lack of humility. It has been so long since you have removed a log from your own eye that you are insensitive to the struggle. When you are stuck in a sin what you need is not a lecture of Bible verses telling you how sinful it is; you already know it is sinful. What you need is wisdom from Scripture about how to overcome it. And a counselor who has not had an excruciating, life and death struggle in their own lives against some sin in recent memory will tend to over-simply the issue and his advice will be decidedly shallow and unhelpful. And if you do not want to be one of those people who gives worthless, shallow, unhelpful “remedies,” the best way to avoid being that type of counselor is to have gone through some massive wrestling match with sin in your own life where you learned firsthand that those simplistic, shallow solutions do not work.
When I first started out as a preacher I had all kinds of easy solutions to people’s problems. They looked great on paper, and they sounded brilliant coming out of my mouth. And everyone in the room thought it was a great sermon – except for the people who were actually struggling with that problem who knew that what I was saying was no help at all. But now, after a couple decades of fighting this war and being on the losing end of attacks from the enemy many times, I have learned that the struggles of the Christian life are not as simple and easy as I thought when I was younger.
The most helpful comrades in this war are those who have some first-hand experience of being taken prisoner for a while by the enemy and then escaping. They are the ones who realize how serious and how hard this war really is. And you see that in Scripture. Who does God tend to use to help sinners? He uses men like David after his fall and his agonizing repentance. When David repented, this is what he wrote:
Psalms 51:1 Have mercy on me, O God, … blot out my transgressions. … 12 Restore to me the joy of your salvation … 13 Then I will teach transgressors your ways, and sinners will turn back to you.
“God, have mercy on me, forgive me, and when You do I will help restore other sinners to You.” And that is exactly what David did. He wrote about it in Psalm 32. That psalm starts out with David rejoicing over having been forgiven for his sin.
Psalm 32:6 Therefore let everyone who is godly pray to you while you may be found … 8 I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go; I will counsel you and watch over you.
David became an excellent counselor. He knew how to restore a sinner to the Lord because he had walked that path. Same thing with Peter. We all know that horrible image of Peter going out into the night and weeping bitterly after his fall. Jesus had warned Peter that Satan was going to come after him big time.
Luke 22:31 "Simon, Simon, Satan has asked to sift you as wheat. 32 … when you have turned back, strengthen your brothers."
The Devil is going to work you over, Peter, and you will fall. But when you repent and are restored – strengthen your brothers. And when Jesus restored him in John 21 He tells him three times: Feed My sheep. The best shepherds are the ones who have recovered after a serious wolf attack. How about Paul? Other than Christ Himself no human being has helped more people in the fight against sin than the Apostle Paul. Why did Jesus choose Paul?
1 Timothy 1:15 Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners--of whom I am the worst. 16 But for that very reason I was shown mercy so that in me, the worst of sinners, Christ Jesus might display his unlimited patience
Restored sinners are the best eye-surgeons. And I am not saying you have to have struggled with the same sin that someone else struggles with in order to help them, but I am saying you have to have struggled.
Why do you think God has allowed the enemy to thrash you so severely? Why does God let him sift us as wheat and work us over and defeat us? One reason is to make us more useful in His hand as tools to help our brothers and sisters in the battle.
The “one-another” ministry God calls us to cannot be done from the lofty heights of self-righteous arrogance. If you go to the world for counseling they have the attitude, “I’m the doctor, and you are a sick patient, and I have the knowledge and expertise to fix you.” It should not be that way in the Church. If you come to me for counsel I hope you do not get the feeling that I am the doctor and you are the patient. I hope instead you get the sense that I am just a fellow patient who arrived at the hospital a few weeks before you and so I can show you some things I have learned about how to call for food and how to ring for the doctor.
“OK Darrell, I get it. I remove the log in my own eye first. But what if I do that – deal with my own sin first, humble myself, deal with the in love and gentleness with humility, but they reject my help?”
Then what? Jesus deals with that in verse 6.
Who are the pig/dogs?
Mathew 7:6 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 then turn and tear you to pieces.
You are trying to offer them the truth of God’s Word but they just trample it underfoot. What should you do? Jesus tells us to stop offering them the holy things they are trampling. “Who are the pigs and dogs?” Jesus gives us two clues.
Clue #1 - The Metaphor
The first one is the metaphor itself – pigs and dogs. Pigs and dogs are both used in Scripture to describe people who are unholy, unclean, and unacceptable to God. And they are used as an example of not just uncleanness, but determined, insistent filthiness.
2 Peter 2:22 Of them the proverbs are true: "A dog returns to its vomit," and, "A sow that is washed goes back to her wallowing in the mud."
Pigs and dogs are people who are determined to be filthy.
Dogs are also used to describe hostile, threatening people.
Psalm 22:16 Dogs have surrounded me; a band of evil men has encircled me … 20 Deliver my life from the sword, my precious life from the power of the dogs.
Pigs can also be very dangerous. If a pig is angry it can kill you. In Psalm 80 the Assyrians who defeated Israel are depicted as pigs who came and ravaged God’s vineyard (v.13).
So what is Jesus communicating through this metaphor? He is describing people who have a combination of determined filthiness and aggressive hostility. They are vile, godless people who are hostile and dangerous.
Clue #2: Their behavior
The other clue is the way Jesus describes their actions.
Matthew 7:6 "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 then turn and tear you to pieces.
They will do two things. They will take out their hostility on the holy, valuable things you are giving them, and they will take out their hostility on you.
These are people who are hostile toward holiness. You give them the gospel, you give them God’s Word, you offer them grace from God and they respond by trampling what you give them underfoot and then coming after you. Every time you say something true about God, they use that as an occasion for blasphemy. It is not that they just disagree – they mock it and mock Christ, and so every time you bring it up, it is an occasion for sin to explode. And when they are done trampling the gospel underfoot, they turn and attack you. It might be literal, physical attack, or it might be verbal, but whenever you speak the truth to them they go on the attack with vicious words or actions.
And thing you are giving them does not necessarily have to be the gospel. It can refer to anything that is of great value. In our culture the most expensive and valued of the precious stones is diamonds, but for them it was pearls. Pearls were worth more than anything else. Jesus told a story about a merchant who might sell everything he owns to buy one pearl. So Jesus is talking here about anything that is of great value because it is holy and righteous. It might be the gospel, or it might be something else – like reproof or correction. It might be your offer to help the person with the speck in his eye. He has a sin in his life, you offer to help, and he flies off the handle. Every time you try to help, he becomes hostile.
They are pearl haters. You take a million dollars worth of pearls, throw them down in front of a pig, he assumes it is some kind of food, takes a couple bites and says, “What kind of sick joke is this?” and he tramples them into the mud and then turns and tears you to shreds. The pearls are valuable, but not to him. He is incapable of appreciating their value, because as a pig the only thing he is capable of valuing is slop and garbage. He is the fool in Proverbs who cannot appreciate the value of godly rebuke because he is wise in his own eyes.
Why withhold pearls?
1) Mercy on the pig/dogs
Not retaliation
When that happens Jesus tells us, “Move on. Stop throwing pearls to that person.”
“Wait a minute – didn’t Jesus just tell us earlier in the Sermon on the Mount to turn the other cheek?”
Yes, He did – and we should. If you are offering something good and the person has a hostile response, there comes a time when you need to walk away – but never as an act of anger or vengeance or retaliation.
But if not for revenge, then why? Why would we ever withhold the Word of God from anyone? Isn’t that unloving?
Actually, it is an act of mercy. When they respond to the gospel with blasphemy, or they respond to some biblical principle by mocking it, ridiculing it – or attacking the messenger God sent them – those people are piling up wrath against themselves on the Day of Judgment. If the person is determined in his rebellion and blasphemy, do not compound this punishment by throwing him more and more opportunities to blaspheme. That is one reason why we withhold holy things from people who are pigs and dogs.
2) Peace
Another reason is God hates quarreling. He is a God of peace. God does not want His people to be embroiled in quarrels and arguments and fights. We don’t run from conflict, we do confront sin for the sake of eliminating it, but when it becomes evident that the person is determined to reject what you are offering, there comes a time when you move on rather than continue to wrangle and quarrel and argue and fight.
2 Timothy 2:23 Don't have anything to do with foolish and stupid arguments, because you know they produce quarrels. 24 And the Lord's slave must not quarrel; instead, he must be kind to everyone, able to teach, not resentful. 25 Those who oppose him he must gently instruct
Do not be drawn into an argument, do not fight, do not quarrel – if someone opposes you, gently instruct him from God’s Word in the hopes that he will be won over to the truth. But if he insists on turning it an argument – walk away.
Proverbs 9:7 Whoever corrects a mocker invites insult; whoever rebukes a wicked man incurs abuse. 8 Do not rebuke a mocker or he will hate you
Do not even engage with a mocker. If it is a profitable debate – you are listening to each other, instructing each other – iron sharpening iron, mutual edification; great – keep it up. But if it is just two people trying to win an argument – you are not open to learn anything from him and he is not open to learn anything from you; then it is a quarrel - walk away.
Make sure you are not a pig/dog
Although – before you walk away make sure you are not the pig/dog. We all have more dog-likeness in us than we care to admit. People criticize me all the time. And some people are very gracious and respectful and gentle about it. But there are other people who just really don’t like me, and so their criticisms feel more like attacks (a lot of sarcasm, innuendo, a mocking tone, harsh language), and much of what they say isn’t even true. And it is always a test when I get criticism like that, because even if it is poorly delivered, there still might be a pearl in there. There might be a kernel of truth that I need to hear and that nobody else will tell me because the people who love me have overlooked that fault and do not even notice it. Remember David in 2 Samuel 16 when Shimei was cursing him and mocking him and throwing rocks at him? Abishai is about to go take off the guy’s head and David says, “Maybe the Lord sent him to do this.” Obviously God is not pleased by the approach Shimei took, but David was alert to the possibility that part of what Shimei was saying may be some pearls from God that he needed to hear. So when someone criticizes me and it makes me mad and I’m ready to say, “This is a quarrel – I’m walking away,” I have to ask myself, “Darrell, are you sure he’s the dog and not you?” Or am I responding like an offended pig that just got pearls rather than whatever tasty morsel of praise I was craving? Because one thing I do not ever want to do is trample on pearls. Even if they are not delivered in the best way – if there is a pearl hidden in there somewhere, I don’t want to trample holy things from God underfoot like a wild dog.
3) Stewardship
It is a bad thing to throw your pearls to pigs is because it is poor stewardship of your pearls. You only have so many pearls, right? Whether it be pearls of wisdom, or whatever ministry you are offering, every minute you spend offering it to one person is a minute you are not ministering to someone else. When someone wants to argue with me about something, and it is obvious that person has zero intension of taking anything I have to say to heart, and there are a whole lot of other people who are open to my influence – why spend my limited time fighting with someone who isn’t interested rather than go to those who are? When someone is not open to your influence, shake the dust off your feet and move on to someone who is open to your influence.
4) The honor of the Word of God
So those are a few reasons we see elsewhere in Scripture, but the reason Jesus focuses on in this text probably is not something we would normally think of, but in Jesus’ eyes is the core of the issue. The issue for Jesus is the sacredness of His holy Word.
Matthew 7:6 Do not give dogs what is holy … lest they trample them under their feet
Do not give dogs what is holy – why? Because it is holy! It is a dishonor for something to be ravaged by wild dogs. When God pronounced judgment on the house of Jeroboam He says, “His family will be killed and eaten by dogs” (1 Ki.14:11). That is one of the most severe judgments that can come down on an evil person. It is a dishonor to be thrown to the dogs, and so the biggest reason not give what is holy to dogs is because it dishonors that holy thing.
If someone hears the gospel of Jesus Christ and rejects it and goes to hell, that is a bad thing – why? Well, one reason it is bad is because that person suffers eternal torment in hell rather than everlasting joy in heaven. But a much greater reason why it is bad is the fact that the holy, precious, treasure of the Gospel, which came from the very mouth of the Holy One Himself, was rejected. It is a greater tragedy for God’s Word to be dishonored than it is for a human soul to go to hell forever. So do not give what is holy to dogs because you do not do that with holy things. You do not use the Ark of the Covenant as a wastebasket. You do not use the pages of God’s Word to make paper airplanes. You do not take the meat that was offered to the Lord on the altar and throw it out on the ground to be scavenged by rats. And you do not throw the gospel out to the dogs because the gospel is holy and is to be treated as such.
The Gospel is for the receptive
Jesus’ example
You see this in the life of Jesus. When Jesus saw the five thousand, He fed them and preached to them and healed them and ministered to them all day long. But then when they came back to Him the following day wanting more free bread…
John 6:26 Jesus answered, "I tell you the truth, you are looking for me, not because you saw miraculous signs but because you ate the loaves and had your fill.
They were not interested in the gospel so Jesus refused to grant their request for more miracles.
King Herod wanted to see a miracle and had all kinds of questions for Jesus, and Jesus gave him neither miracles nor answers (Lk.23:8-9). The gospel is only for the interested. This is why Jesus spoke in parables. It was not to make the truth easier to understand. It was to make the truth harder to understand, so the only people who would get it are those who are interested enough to ask Jesus what they meant.
Matthew 13:10 The disciples came to him and asked, "Why do you speak to the people in parables?" 11 He replied, "The knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of heaven has … not been given to them. …13 This is why I speak to them in parables: "Though seeing, they do not see; though hearing, they do not hear or understand.
When Jesus sent out the Twelve to the lost sheep of Israel He told them…
Matthew 10:14 If anyone will not welcome you or listen to your words, shake the dust off your feet when you leave that home or town.
When Jesus rebuked the Pharisees for their sin and hypocrisy in Matthew 15, His PR team was concerned about the impact that would have on His popularity among the VIP’s.
Matthew 15:12 Then the disciples came to him and asked, "Do you know that the Pharisees were offended when they heard this?"
And Jesus answered, “Oh no, how am I ever going to get my approval numbers back up?” No – here is what He said:
14 Leave them; they are blind guides.
They have missed their chance; they are determined and insistent in their uncleanness, they have shown themselves to be dogs and pigs – leave them. In Acts 13 the people listened to the hostile Jewish leaders instead of Paul, and so Paul said…
Acts 13:46 Since you reject (the Word of God) and do not consider yourselves worthy of eternal life, we now turn to the Gentiles.
The same thing happened five chapters later in Macedonia.
Acts 18:6 when the Jews opposed Paul and became abusive, he shook out his clothes in protest and said to them, "Your blood be on your own heads! I am clear of my responsibility.
Acts 19:8 So Paul entered the synagogue and spoke out fearlessly for three months, addressing and convincing them about the kingdom of God. 9 But when some were stubborn and refused to believe, reviling the Way before the congregation, he left them and took the disciples with him
The gospel is for the receptive
The gospel is for the receptive. The Word of God is granted only to those who hunger and thirst for it. That has always been the case.
Proverbs 2:3 if you call out for insight and cry aloud for understanding, 4 and if you look for it as for silver and search for it as for hidden treasure, 5 then you will understand the fear of the Lord and find the knowledge of God.
God offers a huge buffet of free food, but it is only for the hungry. He is a spring of living water, but it is only available to the thirsty. It is only for people like the Bereans, who were eager to receive it. This is why we are against the trend of turning the worship service into a three-ring circus or a movie theater or a standup comedy stage or a rock concert or whatever other strategy people have come up with to convince uninterested people to come to church. The gospel is not for the uninterested. It is for those who are being drawn by the Father, and you can tell who is being drawn because they will be interested in the truth of God’s Word.
Don’t be callous
Now, having said all that, we need to be careful. We do not want to over-apply this principle. We do not want to become too quick to label someone as a pig or a dog or become callous and apathetic about the lost. We do not want to lose our energy and urgency and creativity in trying to reach people. Remember Paul spent three months debating with those people in Ephesus before he finally decided they were dogs and he should move on.
Stephen
The first thing I do when I begin studying a passage of Scripture for a sermon is to write down all the unanswered questions I have about the passage. And one of the first questions I had when I started studying this passage was, “What about Stephen? Did he violate this verse?” Remember Stephen in Acts 7? He was preaching the gospel and some hostile people came along and had him arrested. And when he was given a chance to speak he preached a long sermon about how these religious leaders were stubborn, godless, disobedient, murderous men who opposed God. And they picked up stones and stoned him to death. It sounds a lot like what Jesus describes in Matthew 7:6. They rejected the pearls he was giving them and turned on him and killed him. So was Stephen guilty of disobeying Matthew 7:6? What about Paul, who went to Jerusalem even though he knew he would be captured and imprisoned? Getting mauled by the pigs and dogs was a regular occurrence for Paul. Over and over – stoned, whipped, scourged, beaten with rods, arrested, imprisoned. Was he disobeying Matthew 7:6?
No, I don’t think they were. They were men who had such a passion for sharing the truth with people that they were willing to pay a steep price – even lay down their lives. If we run away at the first sign of opposition or rejection we can forget about ever reaching the unreached or having any significant success on the mission field – or here at home in evangelism at work or school. The reason you and I are Christians and got to hear the gospel is because missionaries were willing to spill their blood and lay down their lives so that the Gospel could be preached to those who preached it to us.
All things to all men
There are some people who will reject the gospel if it is presented in an unnecessarily offensive way, but who would accept it if it were presented in a better way. They do reject it at first, but they are not pigs or dogs.
1 Corinthians 9:20 To the Jews I became like a Jew to gain the Jews. To those under the law I became like one under the law … to gain those under the law. 21 To those free from the law I became like one free from the law …. to gain those free from the law. 22 To the weak I became weak in order to gain the weak. I have become all things to all people, so that by all means I may save some.
What would have happened if Paul had not done all that? If he did not become like those free from the law in order to win them, or become like the weak in order to win them – what would have happened? Evidently, he would not have won them. If Paul had been insensitive in the way he presented it – if he would have had a “take it or leave it” attitude, a lot of those people who came to faith would not have come to faith. If we are compelled by the compassion of Christ then we are not going to give up on people easily.
In Stephen’s case, it was a whole crowd of people. And even though most of them were pigs and dogs, he knew that it was possible some of them weren’t. And he was right. Most of them rejected the truth, but one young man who was there heard it, and later became a Christian – the Apostle Paul! So we do not want to interpret this passage in a way that would destroy missions, or eliminate all martyrdom. We need to allow our compassion to hold us back from over-application.
How do you decide when to pull the plug?
So how do you decide when to pull the plug and decide that someone is a pig or a dog and move on? I would say that is a wisdom decision that must be made in each particular circumstance. But as a general rule I would say this: you do not pull the plug on sharing the truth with someone unless it is crystal clear that sharing God’s Word with them, no matter how you do it, does more harm than good. It is crystal clear that if you share the truth again it will be an occasion for blasphemy against God and hostility against you. There comes a time when we finally say, “OK, this is not honoring to God at all. I’ve tried everything I can possibly try. I’ve tried every approach I can think of, no matter what I do it’s always a sinful outcome whenever I try to help, and the only thing left to do is to just walk away and continue to pray for them.”
Conclusion
So the grace of God is not for the uninterested. However, it is for the interested. The spring of living water is freely available to all who thirst. The bread of life is given without limit to those who hunger for it. God withholds His gifts from those who do not desire them; but to those who do He pours them out lavishly. And that is the point Jesus moves to next.
Matthew 7:7 Ask and it will be given to you. Seek and you will find. Knock and the door will be opened for you.
Treasure is not to be given to the unreceptive, but if you are receptive it will be given to you. And that would be a promise that would make us leap for joy if it were not for our experiences of unanswered prayer. We all know what it is like to strongly desire something, beg God for it, and He does not give it to us. And since that happens very frequently, what are we to make of Jesus’ promise here? He just says, Ask and it will be given to you. How can He say that if many times it is not even true? That is where we will pick it up next time.
Benediction: Romans 16:25-27 Now to him who is able to establish you by my gospel and the proclamation of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery hidden for long ages past, 26 but now revealed and made known through the prophetic writings by the command of the eternal God, so that all nations might believe and obey him- 27 to the only wise God be glory forever through Jesus Christ! Amen.
