"Seeing Logs and Starving Dogs" Matthew 7:1-6 Sunday Morning Worship Service

Matthew 7, verses 1 through 6, judge not, lest you be judged.

Matthew 7:1–6

For with the judgment you pronounce, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.

Why do you see the speck that is in your brother's eye, and do not notice the log that is in your own eye?

How can you say to your brother, Let me take the speck out of your eye when there is a log in your own eye?

You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother's eye.

Do not give dogs what is holy.

Do not throw your pearls before pigs, lest they trample them underfoot and turn and attack you.

The news this week featured stories from the height of music history, the 1990s rap wars.

If you recall from the 1990s, there was an ongoing feud between the East Coast and West Coast rappers, culminating when the New York-based rapper notorious B.I.G.

paid a gang from California a million dollars to assassinate Tupac outside of a Mike Tyson boxing match in Las Vegas.

The 1990s were wild times, I'll tell you that.

Tupac was allegedly assassinated.

Ostensibly, there's rumors that it was all a ruse.

One rapper paying a criminal gang a million dollars to assassinate his rap rival in Vegas in front of a million witnesses, and nobody is arrested, leads to speculation that Tupac still lives.

Nobody was ever arrested for the crime until this week when they arrested not the person who supposedly killed him, but one of the people who supposedly witnessed the alleged assassination.

I'm sure the arrests will bring all conspiracy theories to a grinding halt.

But that is not my point, although I do love the 1990s.

My point is that Tupac was famous for a tattoo on his left arm that said, Only God can judge me.

That's where I was going with this.

Only God can judge me.

As a quick Google search revealed this week as part of my sermon prep, that was one of the most popular 1990s tattoos, Only God Will Judge Me.

It's a variation, of course, of Matthew 7, verse 1, and declares a truth that God alone is the judge.

Matthew 7:1

It became a popular tattoo among other rappers.

It became somewhat of a cultural code name for Tupac Still Lives, and it became a tattoo prevalent among gang members and drug dealers as well as a way to excuse their criminality.

In our current era, with the 1990s in the Rearview Mirror, our current LGBTQ-dominated culture esteems this Bible verse.

In our world, most of the Bible is considered as rubbish or trash or prejudicial or immoral or whatever, except for Matthew 7, verse 1.

Matthew 7:1

Thomas Jefferson had his Bible, supposedly with the troublesome passages removed, the LGBTQ Bible could likely be reduced to one verse.

This verse.

Only God can judge.

Judge not, lest you be judged, is what the text actually says.

This has become not just a verse that is central in our own society, the last standing Bible verse, long since gone are the days where John 3.16 was the most known Bible verse today.

It is most certainly Matthew 7, verse 1.

Matthew 7:1

People use it to justify their sin and excuse their moral conduct.

And anytime you tell somebody, I think you're living a sinful life, they say, Doesn't your Bible say, Don't judge me?

And you can quibble with their own translation of it, but the heart of what they are quoting is essentially true.

Do not judge.

Now, this is where we head in Matthew chapter 7.

Matthew 7 · chapter mention

This has become not just one of the most beloved Bible verses in our culture, but one of the misquoted, misused, and misappropriated, totally divorced from its context, which really, when you read the passage it's uh nested in, brings the text to life.

This is part of the Sermon on the Mount.

Chapter 7 is the beginning of kind of the end of the Sermon on the Mount, the last third of the sermon.

This fits in, the judge not lest you be judged, fits in in what Jesus is doing here.

Chapter 5, if you recall, was an introduction to the gospel message, the message of the kingdom.

Do you want to go to heaven when you die?

Well, you have to mourn over your lack of righteousness.

You have to be aware that you are a sinner and you stand guilty before God.

You long for righteousness, you desire righteousness, you don't have it.

You hunger and you thirst for it, and that breaks you down.

You have a self-awareness that you don't have what it takes to go to heaven when you die.

You cry out to God for mercy, and God shows you mercy when you cry to him through Jesus Christ.

When you turn your life to Christ, when you believe that he died on the cross bearing the penalty for your sin, that he died so that you don't have to be judged by God, that he rose from the grave to show that you can still live through faith in him.

When you surrender your life to Christ, he forgives you of your sin and he gives you his own righteousness.

He declares you to be righteous and then launches you into a new life.

You become a peacemaker.

You tell other people how to have peace with God.

You're persecuted because now you're salt and light in the world and the world turns against you.

But Jesus says, Blessed are you when they persecute you, because you'll inherit the kingdom of God.

You'll stand on earth and receive God's kingdom when you're persecuted.

That's how the sermon begins.

It moves from that to this idea that if you reject that, if you say, I don't need the righteousness of God that comes through Christ, I have my own righteousness, you will be condemned.

You want to go to heaven based on your own righteousness, Jesus says in Matthew 5, great.

Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect, and then you can go to heaven.

And of course, if that's your standard, you will be condemned by this standard.

Nobody is as perfect as God is.

And so the door to heaven is closed to the one who tries to use his own key to enter it.

The only key that opens the door to heaven is the key of faith in Jesus Christ.

That's Matthew 5, which leads to Matthew 6, where now that you've surrendered your life to Christ, here's some warnings for you.

Don't pray like the Pharisees.

Don't worship like the Pharisees.

Don't give like the Pharisees.

Don't love money like the Pharisees.

You're gonna lead a different life through the gospel that dwells inside of you.

You're not gonna pray like them, you're not gonna give like them, you're not gonna live like them.

Instead, you're gonna pray like this and he teaches you how to pray.

You're gonna give like this and he teaches you how to give.

You're gonna, you're not gonna worry about the things of the world.

You instead are gonna crucify worry like you crucify the flesh and live in the glorious freedom of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

You're gonna treasure the righteousness of God more than the things of this world.

That's how Matthew 6 ends.

You can see in that flow of discussion how one could develop a heart of hypocrisy or a judgmental attitude towards others if you're tracking with Jesus' logic so far.

Recognize you don't have what it takes to get to heaven, like those people don't have what it takes to get to heaven.

Instead, live like this.

Don't pray like the Pharisees, pray like this.

Don't give like the Pharisees, give like this.

Don't love money like those people, instead, love the righteousness of God.

And you're looking at this and you're like, okay, I believe the first part, I don't trust my own righteousness, I die to myself, I hunger and thirst for righteousness from God.

I get that.

I don't want to live like them, I don't want to pray like them, I don't want to be like them.

Here's a better way.

Okay, I'm over here.

Now what?

Well, your eyes are still gonna see them over there.

Your eyes are gonna look at a church filled with people, and you're gonna naturally think it's the human inclination to think, oh, now that I'm over here, these people are certainly living a lot like they're still over there.

They're still using their money like the Pharisees use their money, they're still praying like the Pharisees pray, they're still living like those people live.

It's almost like they've never gone through Matthew 5 to get to Matthew 6, they're just over here, and I don't like that.

The fact that you have surrendered your life to Christ, you repented of your sin, you went through Matthew 6, you're like, yes, I don't want to be like them, I don't want to give like them, I don't want to worship like them, I want to be over here, and now you're here.

There's something in that that's gonna question other people that aren't following you along, especially if those people are within your congregation.

If you know them inside of Christianity.

Having judged the Pharisees, Jesus now doesn't want his followers to turn around and judge each other.

Jesus didn't want the hypocritical followers of the Pharisees to become hypocritical followers of Jesus.

And that's the tendency in our heart.

And that's Matthew 7, verse 1.

Matthew 7:1

Judge not lest you be judged.

I'm gonna give you a pretty simple outline this morning.

I didn't even make slides for it because it's it's pretty simple.

It's logs, dogs, and hogs.

Are with me?

Logs, dogs, and hogs.

We're gonna start with the logs part of this outline.

Logs.

Jesus begins by giving you an illustration of the log in the eye.

Now, where this is going, it starts in verse one.

Don't judge other people.

Certainly, this doesn't mean that Christians are not supposed to make any kind of judgments at all.

The word that is translated, judge, here is a very broad word.

It's got a wide range of meaning.

Crino is the Greek word, a very common Greek word.

It means a lot of different things.

And certainly you can't rule out, you know, you have to rule out that you're not supposed to make any of these kind of judgment decisions.

Like I like red apples over green apples.

The Greek word for that would be this word, judgment.

It's a word that comes in English as critic.

It's like this food is better than that food.

That's this word.

It's a legal verdict.

A judge says guilty or not guilty.

It can be used that way, just like in English.

I judge this fruit better than that fruit.

I judge this person guilty.

It's used sometimes for in the book of Acts for a shortcut.

Uh I think it's quicker to go on Edsel than it is to go on Braddock.

That would be this word in Greek.

Certainly, this doesn't mean you're not supposed to make those kind of judgments, that you're not supposed to decide one way is faster than the other, or every Christian will be stuck at a stop sign.

It's used for judgment calls about things.

You know, that's kind of an umpire calls balls and strikes.

That would be a judgment call, we even say.

In English.

The word makes it in English is judge there.

It's the same kind of concept.

Now, non-Christians will love to say Christians are hypocrites because Christians judge people, and the Bible says don't judge.

I'm sure you've heard that said before multiple times.

There's only one proper response to that.

And the proper response is to say, it sure sounds like you're judging me when you say that.

And that shows you just the logical absurdity of the view of this passage that says you're not supposed to judge at all.

Because if you take an absolutist view of this passage, it becomes logically absurd immediately.

Because you would say, you're judging, which is a violation of the no judging passage.

Oh, I just judged.

Now I judge myself for judging you, for judging the it's nonsense all the way down.

And so there has to be a more restrictive understanding of this.

And I mentioned this just because some people, I've heard somebody say, even this week, I heard somebody tell me, well, you know, when it comes to Sermon on the Mount, Christians explain away the clear teaching of the passage, like do not judge, and they start to come up with all these ways and ways to excuse actual judging when it says don't judge.

And I'm telling you that's just not true.

Like the passage itself goes on in a few verses to say you need to be able to identify hogs and dogs.

That's coming up, like right here.

So obviously, you're supposed to make some kind of judgment calls in life.

As I mentioned, this word is used all over the New Testament.

Sometimes Christians are commanded to do this by Jesus.

John 7, verse 24.

John 7:24

Do not judge by appearances, but make true judgments.

That's this word in an imperative form.

You are supposed to make good judgments against people.

Not based on external appearances, but on the heart.

1 Corinthians 2, verse 2.

1 Corinthians 2:2

Paul says, I have decided, and it's the word judge, I have judged, to know nothing among you except Jesus and him crucified.

1 Corinthians 6, he says the same thing where he says, I've determined to know nothing about people or to make no judgments about people, except whether they're in Christ or outside of Christ.

Romans 14, verse 5.

Romans 14:5

This word is rendered esteems there.

One person esteems one day more than another, judges.

1 Corinthians 10, verse 15, I speak to you as sensible people, let each of you judge what I say.

1 Corinthians 10:15

And again, it's used in an imperative.

Probably the most helpful use of this word is John 7, verse 51, where the Pharisees are saying, okay, we're gonna condemn Jesus to die.

John 7:51

Now we just need to find something to charge him with.

And Nicodemus says, Doesn't our law judge, or does our law judge someone without first giving them a hearing?

Think about how that verse is used.

Does our law judge someone without first hearing evidence?

So there you see judges used as almost like a verdict, a conviction, a condemnation.

Of course, you need evidence before you can render it.

Nicodemus' point is that you need to hear the evidence before you render the verdict.

And I think that's what's going on here in Matthew 7, where Jesus is saying, don't condemn someone.

Don't condemn, condemn is a good use.

Don't condemn someone, especially another believer in the Lord, because then you'll be condemned by the Lord.

If you condemn someone whom Jesus died and forgave, your standard is higher than God's.

That's the idea.

And that's where he goes in verse 2.

He says, With the judgment you pronounce, you'll be judged.

With the measure you use, it'll be measured back over to you.

If you condemn someone for whom Jesus died, you're saying that your standard is better or higher than God's standard.

That's making yourself out to be God.

That's one problem with it.

But the other problem with it is, do you think you'll pass your own standard then?

If Jesus died for that person and forgave them of their sin, and they're now fellowshipping and worshiping in the church, and you look at them and you say, Yes, but I reject them, I condemn them for this, that, or the other thing.

Your standard is above God's standard.

You've elevated yourself, you've nullified the gospel of grace, you've said grace isn't sufficient to change that person to save that person.

I'm different, though.

I'm the arbiter of who receives God's grace.

Well, that's gonna be a boomerang that hits you back in the head.

The Pharisees had an expression that God has two measures, a measure of justice and a measure of mercy.

You can guess which one they thought they'd receive.

And it's not the same one they used in other people.

Jesus is borrowing that expression and saying, if you're gonna use the measure of judgment in other people, that's the measure that God will use back on you.

And measure here, just as like it's it's a term for weighing something.

You got a friendly scale and a non-friendly scale.

The scale the butcher weighs meat for his friends on and the scale the butcher weighs meat for you on.

Whichever scale you use towards others is what God will use towards you.

The point is that you will condemn yourself with your own language.

If you die and you stand before God for judgment, God could tell you, my law says be perfect, you are not perfect, therefore you're condemned.

And you would be justly condemned.

Also, God doesn't even need to go down that road.

You die and you stand before God for judgment, God could simply tell you, here's a standard you judge other people with.

You rejected this person for that, you rejected this person for that, you condemned this person for the other thing.

You've done all of those things you condemned other people for.

Now you're condemned by your own standard, even.

Your own words condemn you.

That's what Jesus is going for here.

You condemn other people for the very things that you yourself have done.

It's not God's righteousness you care about.

It's your own hypocrisy, your own elevation that you've got lifted up.

Augustine has a really wonderful insight into this in his book, Confessions.

He talks about, first of all, how virtue in neighbors can make virtue in you.

You see your neighbors doing virtuous things and suddenly you want to do virtuous things.

Virtue in other people compels you to be virtuous, Augustine says.

But now you see your neighbors slandering each other, and that doesn't really trouble you.

It's like, oh, that's just part of having neighbors, is they talk evilly against each other.

Okay.

But then one of your neighbors slanders you and suddenly it's warfare.

How dare they lie about me?

How dare they?

Who do they think they are?

And Augustine asks this why am I more moved by wrong acts against myself than wrong acts against my neighbor?

Isn't it the same act of injustice before me?

That reveals that the heart of this person is not actually concerned about righteousness, it's not actually concerned about a high standard, but the heart of this person is only concerned about themselves.

For the very sins that you yourself do.

Romans 14, and I'm gonna ask you to turn there.

I want you to flip over to Romans 14.

I want you to just kind of gaze at it with your own eyes here.

We'll be back to Matthew 7 soon enough.

But Romans 14 is probably a more full understanding of Matthew 7, verses 1 and 2.

Matthew 7:1

It's more than one verse here.

Uh it's just one verse in Matthew 7, 7, right?

Greek words here, but in Romans 14, Paul gives a paragraph long instruction about this.

Romans 14, verse 10.

Romans 14:10

Where he says, down in verse 10, why do you pass judgment on your brother?

It's the same phrase again.

Why are you condemning your brother?

Why are you rendering a verdict against a brother in the Lord?

Why do you despise your brother?

And now he's getting the heart of it.

There's some gray area in the church.

How to worship, whether to wear a suit on Sundays?

Is Sunday the Sabbath?

The examples he gives in Romans 14, is Sunday the Sabbath or the Lord's Day?

What if you're in an Arab country that says churches are illegal if they meet on Fridays?

Should you meet on Friday?

Is that become a Christian Sabbath?

Is that now the Lord's Day?

These are gray areas that different people decide differently on.

I mean, I have strong convictions myself, but this is the example Paul uses in Romans 14.

You can have a strong conviction, but you recognize it's a gray area.

What day you worship, what you wear when you worship, how entertainment in your own life, what kind of music you listen to, how you parent.

These are gray areas.

And we pass judgment on other people for them.

You look at the family two rows in front of you in the pews, and you think, oh, they're not parenting, right?

You saw them for 12 seconds.

Don't look two rows behind you now, families.

Please don't.

You've seen them for five seconds, you're like, oh, I would have spanked my kids for that.

Those poor, those poor kids.

They're gonna grow up like wolves.

I'll probably get an only God can judge me tattoo.

You're so quick to judge people by a standard that you yourself would fail, of course.

It's one thing to do it in your heart, but of course it doesn't stay in your heart.

It becomes slanderous.

That judgment becomes slanderous, and you tear down other people in the church.

You pass judgment on them.

Why would you slander them?

And Romans 14 gives you the answer, because you despise them.

And Paul says, We're all going to stand before the judgment seat of God.

He'll sort this out.

As I live, says the Lord, every knee will bow to me, every tongue will confess to God.

That's the standard right there.

Every knee will bow before God, every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.

He will judge his own servants, he will judge his own slaves, he will judge his own children.

We're all in his household.

We answer to him, and you say, but I don't trust his judgment on that guy right there.

He should be condemned.

Those parents should be condemned.

That lady over there should be condemned because they're not meeting my standard.

Now your standard is above God.

You're saying that their knees and their tongue will bow to you and confess you.

Rather, verse 12, Romans 14, each of you will give an account of himself to God, not to each other.

Therefore, don't pass judgment, there's that word again, on one another any longer.

That's a conclusion.

You can flip back to Matthew 7.

Well, you're flipping there.

Let me read you.

James 4, verse 11 don't speak evil against one another.

James 4:11

The one who speaks evil against his brother judges his brother, and he speaks evil against the law and judges the law.

That's the same logic James picks up in James 4, verse 11.

James 4:11

Because the judgments you're passing, the word that sees here in Matthew 7, becomes slander.

You see someone parenting in a certain way, and you say, that's not appropriate, and so I reject that.

And then you tell somebody about it, you're tearing down that person.

You're slandering that person over your hypocritical judgment, by the way.

I can't believe, I can't believe that person has that much money.

How can you be a Christian to have that much money?

They got one more dollar than you in the bank account, and you're like, oh, how can they even be saved?

They got one less dollar than you in the bank account, and you're like, oh, they're not a hard worker.

You've threaded that needle perfectly, though, man.

You don't love money and you work just hard enough.

That guy doesn't spend enough time with his kids.

That guy is always at home and never works.

What do you want?

That's the way our hearts are.

Judging, judging, judging.

It would be one thing if that secret was bouncing around in your heart, but no, no, you just tell your wife and your 17 accountability partners.

It's a prayer request.

You need to pray for so-and-so.

You need to pray.

It's such garbage.

And the Lord sees it.

He sees right into your slanderous, deceitful, murderous heart.

It's on full display for him.

And you'll be condemned by it.

Now he gives an illustration.

This is the illustration uh illustration of the logs.

How can you, verse three, you say there's a speck in your brother's eye, right?

You got a brother, he's got a speck in his eye.

A speck is the tiniest little word.

He's got a little dust particle in his eye, and that can be so annoying, can't it?

You know, I was lying trimming in my yard the other day and I wasn't wearing glasses.

My bad, and something hit my eye, and I'm like, oh help, I'm going blind.

Have my kids come over.

Can you see anything?

Is it still there?

All right.

How can you get a speck out of your brother's eye?

Verse three, but you don't notice the log that's in your own eye.

Now, log is an unusual, we don't you don't often use that word in English.

I don't anyway, but it's this it's the word for something that's like a support beam.

Rafter would be the word I would use.

You've got a little speck in that guy's eye over there, and then he comes up and says, Hey, I have a speck in my can you help?

And you're like, Yeah, that can help.

And you turn around and there's a roofing rafter hanging out of your eye.

Where's that speck again?

You can't help somebody get a speck out of their eye when you've got that plank from the roof lodged in your own face.

Like, I'm pretty sure I see a speck in your eye back there.

I'm gonna condemn you for that speck.

And notice that now you're at least the motive is changing.

In verse 1, you were just condemning the person.

But now in verse 3, you're like, okay, Galatians says, he who's caught in a trespass, the one who's spiritual should restore him.

So I'm gonna go ahead and be a good Christian and help that guy get his speck out of his eye, because I see his fault.

I'm gonna help him.

But you've got a giant rafter in your face.

How can you do that?

You hypocrite, verse five.

Take the log out of your own eye, and then you'll be able to take the speck out of your brother's eye.

This is one little, one of the many reasons you know that Matthew 7, verse 1 doesn't mean don't judge anybody ever.

Matthew 7:1

Because Jesus goes to teach you how to help other people.

You want to help them.

This is where a discipleship relationship is key.

An older godly person can help a younger person who wants to grow in the Lord.

And you help them with, you don't just say, I'm not gonna judge anybody's parenting.

No, you're older and godly, and so you help the younger families because you love them and you minister with them, you help them learn to parent.

You don't say, I'm not gonna help that guy get over his sin because that would be judging.

No, you develop a relationship with them and you encourage them brother to brother in the Lord to help grow in Christ, and the older person helps the younger person, but the older person better not be getting a speck out of the younger person's eye when he's got a railroad tie in his own.

That's the idea.

Discipleship, good, condemnation, bad.

Helping one another grow, good.

Getting specks out of people's eyes, great.

Just not maybe the guy with the plank in his own face.

That's the thing with slander.

You know, slander is more dangerous to the church than the speck in that person's eye is.

I guarantee it.

You think, oh, that person has some sin.

It's glaring, I can see it from here, the speck in his eye, I can see it from here.

It's obvious to everybody.

And so you tear down the church to tell everybody about that person's speck.

You tell non-believers about that person's speck, you tell believers about that person's speck, believers question the church, non-believers question the church, oh, because the dude has a speck in his eye.

I'm not even doubting there's a speck in the guy's eye.

Sure, granted, the guy has a speck in his eye.

Great.

I sign off on that.

There's a speck.

Done.

But you swinging a railroad tie around is lopping off everybody's head, way worse than that guy's speck.

Psalm 101, verse 5.

Psalms 101:5

Whoever slanders his neighbor secretly, I will destroy.

You don't even need the rest of the verse.

You slander your neighbor, God's gonna strap dynamite to you and blow you up.

Because that's what your slander does.

Slander is just the lazy man's way of murdering somebody.

You're too lazy to get an axe, too much restraint to get a gun, you don't want to do jail time, so you'll just kill the person with your words.

You're upset that the law doesn't condemn what you want to condemn, and so you weaken the law to elevate yourself.

But you would be judged by God if he used that judgment against you.

So rather, confess your own sins.

You know, practically, what does this look like?

When you are examining others in your heart, have an ounce of humility and find their own, that same sin in you first.

Ask yourself, what am I doing wrong, not what is that person doing wrong.

Here's a little diagnostic test.

If you're listening to this sermon and you think, man, I know somebody who needs to listen to this, you're that person.

Like, oh, I got a friend that totally needs this.

No, that would be the mirror you're talking to.

Don't ask yourself who to give this lesson to.

Ask yourself, how does this lesson apply to me?

John Stott says about this passage, quote, the command to judge is not a requirement to be blind, but a plea to be generous.

Jesus doesn't tell us to cease to be men by suspending our critical powers, which distinguish us from animals, but to renounce the presumptuous ambition to be God.

In other words, the command of this passage is you can still be a discerning person.

Just don't try to be God.

Be generous in how you help people, not critical.

It's meant to be hyperbolic and funny.

The foolishness of the plank in the eye, by the way, the foolishness is that everybody sees it except the person with it.

The person with it thinks you're just trying to help other people with specs.

Here's the test though for you.

Do the 20 people around you all have black eyes from your plank?

The problem might not be your spec.

The other day I broke a handle on a ceramic knife, and it cleanly broke though.

Like a weird jagged piece of the ceramic part broke off, and I thought, man, I can fix this and nobody will know.

And so I go downstairs and I super glueing it back together, and now I get super glue all over my fingers, and I'm like, okay, super glue my fingers.

Let me grab this Kleenex to help.

That is a that's the wrong response.

Okay.

And right then, as I'm sitting here with Kleenex on my hands, one of my children, who will remain nameless, comes by with I'm gonna say a quarter of a waffle on their face, but I might be exaggerating.

It was a sizable piece of breakfast on their face.

And oh, it's so tempting.

But I'm probably not the right person at this moment to help them out.

Because then I'll have one hand stuck to their face, Kleenex off of this hand stuck to the cat.

It would be a whole thing.

Hypothetically.

That's what Jesus is warning against.

Deal with yourself before turning to others.

The dogs and logs will go much more faster here.

Verse 6: Do not give dogs what is holy.

Dogs, don't picture the little thing in your purse.

Uh don't picture the labrador in your backyard that you love and sleep at the foot of your bed.

No, that's not a Jerusalem dog.

Jerusalem's dog draw dogs are vicious.

They're third world street dogs.

They eat scraps off of the food off of the street, they kill other animals, they hunt in packs.

If you saw them on the street, you would run away.

That's the dogs.

Giving them what is holy is what's offered in the temple.

You bring your sacrifice to the temple, you sacrifice it to the Lord.

Some of it goes home with the priest for his own food, some of it goes home with you so the worshiper can eat, and the rest is burned at the altar before Yahweh.

That's what is holy, is what is burned there on the altar.

That's the holy part.

Not even the worst priest would take that off the altar and feed it to the dogs on the street.

No, you burn it until it's ash and it's offered to Yahweh.

You wouldn't wait until the worshiper leaves and feed it to a dog.

Even the worst priest in the Old Testament, they might steal the meat for themselves.

Back in 1 Samuel, but they wouldn't give it to dogs.

Nobody would do that.

Dogs here stand in for the religious leaders, leaders of false religions.

Paul says, be wary, be wary of the dogs.

They're ravenous, they roam about, they want to devour you.

These are religious leaders that have elevated themselves.

Philippians 3.2, beware of the dogs, look out for evildoers.

They mutilate the flesh.

The lesson of the logs is don't elevate yourself.

The lesson of the dogs is don't confuse the gospel with these other religions.

Those false religious leaders are dangerous.

If you overly stress verse 1, you find yourself in a situation of I don't want to judge anybody or discern anything.

And so Jesus follows it with verse 6.

You got these leaders of false religions, don't give them the treasure of the kingdom.

This is Herod.

He's a Jewish leader, king of Galilee.

And Jesus is brought before him.

And Herod, remember when Jesus comes in and says, Oh, I'm so glad to see you.

I've waited for this time.

I've wanted to see you.

Do some sign for me.

And Jesus kept his mouth shut the whole time he was there.

He's not going to give Herod, who's a dog, something that's holy, which is the words of Christ.

2 Corinthians 6 verse 14.

2 Corinthians 6:14

Come out from among them, leave the sexually immoral of the world.

Those false religious leaders, what partnership does Christ have with Belial?

Separate yourself from them.

We had a Mormon leader come to our church once on a Sunday morning, wanting to come and invite people to some you know singles Mormon event.

And, you know, there I'll I'll tell you, there was a conversation in the hallway with like, do we no trespass them right now?

Or do we invite them to church and they can sit in the front row and maybe they'll get saved?

And you know, no trespassing them is the right answer, by the way.

What do you I'm not gonna have a pit bull sit in the front row and hopefully get saved, you know, it'll bite your arm off.

Pitbull owners, please don't correct me after the service.

The point is, you're not gonna take a dangerous animal and set it in the front of the church and say, maybe the dangerous animal will come to faith.

No, the dangerous animal will eat other people.

You don't give what is holy to dogs.

You just don't.

If you're any kind of shepherd, you don't say, I'll let the wolves run with the sheep.

Maybe they'll learn some sheep-like habits.

Only what they eat.

And that's Jesus' warning here.

Yeah, don't judge people in the church, okay?

Don't elevate your estimation about gray areas over other believers.

That's silly.

Let them stand before the Lord on their own.

Don't take that ethic, though, and apply it to one of the Sanhedrin that walks into the Sermon on the Mount.

These guys are dangerous.

They devour widows' houses for a pretense.

Don't say, oh, you're a religious leader, would you pray at my meal?

Yeah, they'll eat your house.

False religious leaders are dangerous and deadly.

That leads to the hogs.

Don't throw your pearls before swine, before pigs.

Pigs are not like the fat pigs that you see at the farmers, you know, the petting zoo, the giant, you know, 400-pound pig.

That's not what we're dealing with here.

We're dealing with wild boars.

They've got, you know, tusks or whatever.

They are, you know, fleet of feet.

They are dangerous.

They will chase you, they will hurt you, they will knock you down, they will trample you.

The word here is lacerate you.

It's translated in the ESV here is uh attack or harm you, and they'll trample you on underfoot and attack you.

The word is lacerate, they'll slice you to pieces.

Who would feed a pig a pearl?

Nobody is the answer.

Pigs eat slop.

You don't you don't even feed the pig a steak.

You got a nice steak, that's for you, not the pig.

You might throw the fat to the pig, maybe.

Pigs here are unclean animal.

The view, I think Jesus has in mind here, the people that are given over to their desires.

Every sin is equal in some sense, but Romans 1 speaks of the category of people that are turned over to their desires.

Peter speaks of pigs the same way.

They they wash the pig up and it goes back and rolls and it's muck and mire.

It's just given over to its sensual desire.

These are people that reject the gospel, they uh mock the gospel.

You don't want the gospel to be mocked.

The gospel is the pearl of great price.

You have a precious, precious pearl, you don't say, I love this pearl so much I want to give it to a pig.

What would the pig even do with it?

I'll tell you what to do with it.

He would put it in his mouth to see if it was stake, then he'd spit it out at you, and then he'd attack you for not giving him stake.

Why are you doing that?

If somebody is mocking the gospel and rejecting the gospel, you don't keep giving them the gospel.

You move on so the gospel's not attacked.

The lesson of the logs is don't elevate yourself.

The lesson of the dogs is don't confuse the gospel.

The lesson of the hogs is don't cheapen the gospel by throwing it in with the mud.

Stu Weber, who's preached on this fall, but before I know many of you know, I'm gonna want to quote him because sometimes it sits with us the wrong way to say, hey, don't keep bringing those people the gospel.

In our culture, we kind of make evangelism an idol, we'll do anything, we'll compromise any principle for evangelism.

That's bad.

Stu Weber notes that.

He writes, quote, to persist in sharing with the resistant person wastes your time and the church's energy.

It destroys a relationship that might even turn out to be fruitful later.

There's an art to walking the line between pushiness and apathy.

Too many people expose the church to danger by not understanding that distinction.

Bring the gospel to the pigs, they'll likely turn and attack this Jesus has in mind your persecution.

Of course, Christians are going to be persecuted, and blessed are you when you're persecuted, because yours is the kingdom of heaven.

But don't put yourself in an obvious situation where persecution is the result of it.

You know, you go, I'm gonna give you a very practical example.

This is an extreme example, and so you can then appropriate your own life.

One of my friends and I were preaching at a pastor's conference in a country that's closed to the gospel.

They do not let Christians into the country.

They very seldom uh let any religious leaders or educators into the country.

We got a visa because a Christian had wormed his way up in government and was able to give us a visa to teach at a pastor's conference there.

This country has minders with all Westerners that are there.

We have a government minder who's with us.

There's a church member who is licensed by the government to be a minder, so he's escorting us there.

So we're flying under the radar and getting away with it.

We're staying at a tourist hotel to make sure our tracks are covered and everything, all appearances are kept up.

And at breakfast, we meet this guy, another American who's backpacking across the country.

And he, you know, we introduce ourselves to him.

And he gives us his name and we start talking.

He asks us what we're doing, and we say, We're, you know, we're educators, we teach, uh, which is true.

And I would I honestly would never lie in a situation like that.

It's a hundred percent true.

I'm an educator and I teach.

And my friend said the same thing, and this guy takes out his phone, which has a rainbow flag across it, uh, and googles our names and finds out that we are pastors like that on his little iPhone.

And we're like, okay.

Now in this instance, is it time to share the gospel with this guy?

Or time to go refill our coffee and leave out the left door?

B.

I mean, one more piece of the puzzle could expose the guy in the government who gave us our visas, could expose our minder.

One more piece of the puzzle, this guy just needed one more piece, and this whole thing would come crashing down.

I'm not saying God can't save that guy.

I'm saying you needed a sense of awareness that when someone has given their life over to sexual immorality, it becomes a danger.

A danger to you.

And to the church.

You want to get attacked by a wild pig?

A dog returns to its vomit, the pig, after washing itself, wallows in the mire.

Be very careful about bringing pearls there.

What should you do with the pearl?

You find the treasure of the gospel.

What should you do with it?

Sell all you have.

Give up your life to hold on to that pearl.

It's so different than feeding it to the dogs.

Lord, we're thankful for the preciousness of the gospel that you've given us.

This requires wisdom, we know.

There's a balance between not judging and not sharing with dogs and pigs.

We recognize that wisdom is the ability to navigate those two extreme ends.

So give us that wisdom as we go into the world this week.

Help us navigate at our own works, in the military, in the government, in our own society.

Help us navigate what's dangerous and what's fruitful.

Help us be good stewards of our time and resources.

We ask this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

And now, for a parting word for Pastor Jesse Johnson.

Thanks for joining us.

If you're in the Washington, D.C.

area, I would love to see you at Emanuel Bible Church.

For more information on our church or our current service times, go to iBC.church.

For more information about the Master Seminary and their Washington, D.C.

location, go to TMS.edu.

I hope this resource has been a blessing to you and it helps you seek the Lord daily, serve others around you, and share the gospel with boldness.