"it's Not Our Job To Judge The World"

“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.