“Do not give what is holy to dogs, and do not throw your pearls before swine, or they will trample them under their feet, and turn and tear you to pieces.”
I remember my dad telling about a dream he had once. He was walking in a residential neighborhood and approached a gate that led to the rear yard of a house. I don’t know if in his dream he was conscious of a reason for being there, but he said that he could see a large black dog at the far end of the yard. He could also see the dog’s run marked by the limit his length of chain would let him go, so my dad felt safe to enter through the gate and go around to the back door of the house.
He said he opened the gate, walked about 10 feet into the yard, then realized that the chain was not hooked to the dog’s collar. As the dog began to charge my dad turned to run and got back out the gate just before the growling, snapping dog could reach him.
Now I don’t know if he ever figured out the reason for that dream. Its obvious lesson is, never enter the rear yard of a strange house where there’s a big black dog.
He did provide me with a story to begin this sermon though, so if he never made use of the dream at least I now have.
I’ll see if I can make application of that illustration somewhere; the main reason I started with it is because I’m trying to get a handle on what this verse is all about and just felt I should start with a ‘mean dog’ story.
WHAT ABOUT NOT JUDGING?
I guess the first thing we should do is anticipate the question that will surely arise in the minds of some: “Didn’t Jesus just say not to judge?” And secondly, “What about the whole speck/log/eye ‘thing’ which He just said in verse 5?”
Well to answer the first question I’ll just remind you of what was said in the previous sermon. We must make discerning judgments concerning the people around us who we know are not believers or at least do not manifest Christian behavior, so we can lovingly give them the gospel.
We also must use Spirit-led discernment in the church in reference to the teaching we’re hearing and the kinds of behaviors we might witness that are not Christ-like, so potential problems can be dealt with. Now that’s a loaded statement but we’re going to be covering the topic in more detail as we move through this chapter.
We said that the judgment Jesus was warning against was a condemning sort of judgmentalism of our brothers and sisters in Christ.
You may remember we also noted that in telling us to remove our own logs before we presume to help another with his speck, there was the implication that once we’ve examined our self and dealt with the impurities and inconsistencies in our own heart we might view our brethren with a great deal more compassion and a great deal less scrutiny.
Now we know that this is not just an isolated statement that Jesus pulled out of the air somewhere as a sidebar or an afterthought. So we take note of what has been said and break it down to this progressive admonition:
Don’t be going around among the brethren, ruining reputations and relationships with harsh condemnation, judging the worth of other Christians based on your own sin-tainted view and assessment of them.
Instead, seek to have your own hypocrisy dealt with and be sure your own relationship with the Lord is what it ought to be, and make sure your relationship with your fellow believers is what it ought to be.
Once done, then you will be prepared to make the proper discernments that will help you obey the injunction of verse 6 in a Godly manner.
WHO ARE THE DOGS AND PIGS?
Now if we are to know who we are not supposed to give holy things to and who we’re supposed to withhold our pearls from we first have to figure out who the dogs and pigs are.
Sounds kind of harsh, doesn’t it?
When I was in my Jr High and High School years I read all of the “CONAN the Barbarian” stories by Robert E. Howard.
I don’t remember what story this was in, but at one point Conan, meaning to insult some thug who was acting badly in a small tavern, said “Where I come from we lock our dogs outside the city gates at night so they don’t defile our houses”. And of course, the fight was on.
I don’t think Jesus intended for us to go around calling people dogs. In fact, I’m certain of that. And we’re not to consider them dogs because they’re misbehaving. We’re supposed to have a Christ-like heart toward the unsaved and not take offense at them but try to get the gospel to them when possible.
But let’s put this in the context of the time and culture to which Jesus spoke just so we get a clear picture.
First, they didn’t keep dogs as pets. Dogs were wild and lived on whatever scraps they could find thrown out or small animals they could catch. So we’re not talking here about noble German Shepherds or well-coiffed Poodles or cute little Pomeranians that curl up on the sofa and yap at passers by.
We’re thinking here of mean, unkempt and often diseased mongrel curs who slink away from on-coming pedestrians and potentially attack the lone traveler on a deserted road if they feel they can overcome him.
When it comes to the pigs we know that the Jews didn’t want to have anything to do with pigs. They were unclean under Mosaic Law and there was never an acceptable time for a Jew to either eat pork or herd swine. Leviticus 11:7-8
Now before I actually go on to tell you who the dogs and pigs are there is something I want to make very clear to you. I will ask you to listen carefully; do not let your mind wander; just listen and understand this as of primary importance at this point.
Jesus, in talking about dogs and pigs, was not doing the ‘Conan’ thing, intending to insult and berate, nor will I as this sermon progresses.
At various points through the Bible, both Old and New Testaments, these sort of references are made. Amos talks to the women of the Northern Kingdom and calls them the ‘cows of Bashan’. In today’s American society that could get a guy doused with gasoline and set on fire.
But in that culture it was understood as a reference to their life of ease and pampering and socializing with the wealthy and the influential, because they understood that the livestock in Bashan was pampered and well-cared for.
You only need to think of the Song of Solomon, if you’ve ever read that, to realize that the Middle Eastern culture uses the things around them, the things familiar to them, to illustrate what they want to communicate.
My wife does not have temples that remind me of two halves of a pomegranate, but apparently the babe Solomon was writing to was just swept off her feet with such a reference.
The morning I was set to come back to working on this sermon I heard the CNN folks talking about pickup lines. Slow news day. One of the guys said his favorite was ‘Besides being hot, what else do you do?’ Another one was, ‘Is your dad a thief? Because he stole the stars from the sky and put them in your eyes.’ (groan…)
I truly hope these lines don’t work on intelligent young women in A.D. 2006.
Lynn’s hair is not like a flock of goats and her teeth don’t remind me of newly shorn sheep; but apparently in Biblical times that was a great pickup line.
Well hopefully you’re getting my drift. Jesus would have used these terms to make a parallel between the nature of these animals and the behavior of the people He is talking about. Not to insult them, as it would be construed if we spoke to folks today and called them dogs and pigs.
The priests in the temple didn’t make a sacrifice and then take the consecrated meat from the altar and toss it to the dogs in the street. Anyone owning precious pearls knew that pigs would not appreciate the value of them, but in their rooting they would just tamp them down into the mud and go on rooting.
So let’s go ahead and talk about who Jesus was referring to and warning against.
I’ve already touched on this, but He could not have meant only unsaved people. We are supposed to tell them the good news of Jesus Christ, and to warn us not to give them anything deeper than the gospel would be a waste of time.
They are blind. They are dead in trespasses and sins. They cannot understand spiritual things and it would be useless to try to explain points of doctrine and the nature of holiness to a dead person. They need to hear the gospel so that the Holy Spirit might grant them repentance and regeneration and bring them into the family of God.
No, the people Jesus was warning us to hold back from and not ‘give what is holy’ to them or ‘toss our pearls’ at them, would be people who have in some surface fashion attached themselves to the church, made a profession of Christ, perhaps been baptized and even taken other vows before the Lord, but continue to show contempt for Christ and His people by their frequent absence from the assembly, their rude behavior when they are present, and their obvious lack of concern for spiritual things.
They do not hunger and thirst after righteousness, show no interest in having their heart purified, couldn’t care less if peace is made between God and any of the unchurched people they socialize with day to day.
They have made a ‘profession’ of Christ, meaning they have professed with their mouth to believe in Him and that they are a Christian; but their lives do not make a ‘confession’ of Christ. You would never know by anything about their life that they ever expressed any interest in the church at all, except that they show up once in a while when they need some kind of help and support that they are confident Christians will give them.
There are also those who frequent the assembly, involve themselves in the activities of the church, but they are prideful and arrogant.
They won’t be taught and they scoff at any teaching that does not fit the mold of their pet doctrines that they’ve clung to since they first came into the church.
Jesus says not to give them what is holy and precious. So what are those things?
HOLY THINGS AND PEARLS
I do not believe there is any specific typical reference here. Men of earlier centuries of the church assumed it meant the Eucharist (elements of the Lord’s Supper), and they were not entirely wrong in that those things can be included and indeed we should be careful to convey that people should examine their own hearts and know that they are truly Christ’s before partaking of Communion.
But I think Jesus was generally speaking of the spiritual truths of the faith and the scriptural promises of God concerning His grace and provision for the believer.
Whether a self-declared unbeliever who has shown blatant contempt for Jesus and the church and outwardly scoffed multiple times at the gospel message, or one of the fringe church folk I was talking about earlier, or some stiff-necked hard-hearted old pew nail who stopped learning as soon as he decided he knew enough, the only thing to do with these people is keep offering them milk and pray that God will deal with their hearts.
OUR RESPONSE
Peter gives an admonition concerning these people:
“For if, after they have escaped the defilements of the world by the knowledge of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in them and are overcome, the last state has become worse for them than the first. 21 For it would be better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than having known it, to turn away from the holy commandment handed on to them. 22 It has happened to them according to the true proverb, “A DOG RETURNS TO ITS OWN VOMIT,” and, “A sow, after washing, returns to wallowing in the mire.” 2 Peter 2:20-22
There does come a time, Christians, when in the exercise of Godly wisdom we are to cease trying to get through to folks. Jesus clearly taught this.
“Whoever does not receive you, nor heed your words, as you go out of that house or that city, shake the dust off your feet”. Matt 10:14
In Acts 13 when the Jews attempted to instigate a riot against the Apostles we’re told that Paul and Barnabas shook the dust off their feet as an indication that they were done with that place, and they went on to Iconium.
There are other examples within the book of Acts of Paul doing the same thing after he has attempted to reason with men and they have repeatedly rejected his gospel and threatened him with abuse.
John R.W. Stott said, “The saints are not judges, but the saints are not simpletons either”.
The clear teaching of Jesus here and the Apostles later is that it can only be detrimental to Christians and to Christian ministry to continue chasing after people and trying to reason with the ‘dogs’ and ‘pigs’ when they have consistently demonstrated this kind of animal behavior.
And I suppose this is the place to apply my dad’s dream. We should never be surprised at a dog acting like a dog. Even when they are our pets they still act doggy.
I don’t want to gross anyone out but referring back to Peter’s quotation of the Proverb (26:11), if your dog vomits on your kitchen floor you’d better grab his collar quick. I’ll say no more about that; you get the point.
Nor should we expect swine to act like finishing school graduates.
How many ministries have been destroyed or at least badly hindered in their progress because the philosophy of the local body is that the fleshly fringe has to be coddled and cajoled and plied with free food and entertainment for the kids and whatever other clever ruses come to mind, to keep them coming back?
How many churches stagnate and start smelling of rot because a leadership driven by mercy lets itself be controlled by a handful of Pharisees with as much spiritual life as a piece of granite?
Well, I’ll draw this to a close by taking it back to the context in which we find this verse. And it does look a little strange where we find it, doesn’t it?
Jesus is warning against condemning our brothers with a judgmental attitude and talking about searching and examining ourselves first before we presume to condescend to someone else’s perceived needs. Then here is this strange verse about dogs and pigs and our treatment of them.
Next He’s going on and talking about asking and seeking and finding and so forth, and it all seems a little disjointed on the surface.
I think though that it all comes together solidly if we just remind ourselves what it’s all really about.
It’s about a Jewish carpenter being nailed to a cross and dying. It’s about a message that makes no sense to the mind of flesh, and that is going to be rejected and maligned as ridiculous and offensive until the Holy Spirit makes something of it in the human heart.
Therefore, as we’ve already noted several times, since Jesus is teaching this for Spirit-filled believers, it makes a great deal of sense indeed, if we step back and look at the whole with a spiritual mindset and see that He is saying we should let all of our relationships be guided by the Spirit, and be good stewards of the spiritual truth we know and enjoy and are entrusted with, and continue, unhindered by the weight of those who refuse to come along, to seek spiritual things diligently with the assurance that as we do God will provide.
Let’s just never drift away from our first calling, Christians, to be prepared at any time to give an answer for the hope that is in us to anyone who wants to know.
Lastly, let’s be diligent to examine ourselves and be sure that we are not acting like the pooches and the pigs.
God’s Word is filled with pearls of great price. We must continue to mine them out and treat them as the precious things they are and let them adorn our lives.
God’s gentle Holy Spirit is ever ready to lead us deeper into holiness and truth, always pointing to Jesus and drawing us ever closer to His heart.
Let’s be careful to stay faithful to the pursuit of pearls and holy things ourselves, encouraged as we go by the promise from Jesus Himself that everyone who seeks finds, and everything that the Father gives is good.
