Dogs & Hogs Matthew 7:6 Baxter T. Exum (#1786) Four Lakes Church of Christ Madison, Wisconsin June 1, 2025 Good morning and welcome to the Four Lakes congregation! It is so good to be together this morning! And if you are visiting with us today (either here in person or online or on the phone), you are our honored guest, and we’d like to ask that you fill out a visitor card – either online or on a card from the pew in front of you. And we also invite you to pass along any questions or prayer concerns in this way as well. We are here this morning to share the good news that while we were sinners, Christ died for us; he was buried, and then he was raised up from the dead on the first day of the week, and this gives us hope for a life after this one! In 2 Thessalonians 1, however, the apostle Paul explains that there is a time coming, “...when the Lord Jesus will be revealed from heaven with His mighty angels in flaming fire, dealing out retribution to those who do not know God and to those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus.†He says that, “These will pay the penalty of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of His power, when He comes to be glorified in His saints on that day, and to be marveled at among all who have believed.†It is in our best interest, then, to “obey the gospel.†This is why we explain every week that we obey the good news by believing it, by having a change of heart concerning sin, by confessing Jesus as the Son of God, and by allowing ourselves to be buried with Jesus in baptism, an immersion in water for the forgiveness of our sins, at which point our sins are forgiven we are born into God’s family. And as our custom has been, we are sharing some updates concerning what this actually looks like. Last week, you may remember I shared an update from a friend of a friend who was doing some preaching in Ghana last week. They posted again last Saturday night, and they post under the heading, “Saturday Evening Blessing from Ghana.†They say that, “As we were preparing for tomorrow morning’s worship, a man we studied with earlier this week, came to our door at the hotel—burdened by conviction and ready to make his life right with the Lord. The truth of repentance had been weighing heavily on his heart, and tonight, he made the decision to turn away from his sins and obey the Gospel through baptism. With full sincerity, he was baptized late at night in the cold ocean waters, showing just how serious and urgent his decision was. What a powerful reminder of what true repentance looks like. I wish everyone could have the kind of urgency and determination he had—to not wait, to not ignore, but to respond to the call of Christ. Please pray for him as he begins his walk in the Lord’s church.†They close by quoting the question Ananias asked Saul in Acts 22:16, “And now why are you waiting? Arise and be baptized, and wash away your sins, calling on the name of the Lord.†This next one comes to us from Henry Smith down in Hollywood, Florida. He says that, “Today was an unforgettable day as I baptized my son Isaiah on his birthday! There are no words to fully express the joy and emotion in my heart right now. This morning's message was about renewing our JOY, and witnessing Isaiah respond to the gospel invitation is a blessing I will treasure forever. Thank you, Lord, for this special day and for the angels rejoicing alongside us! This one comes to us from Marty Johnson out in Sandpoint, Idaho. I got to meet Marty at the Freed-Hardeman lectures this year. He was doing a lesson on YouTube evangelism. But, they posted this week saying, “Praise God! Jeromy and Angela put on Christ in baptism last night. Thank you both for allowing us to be a part of your journey. We pray that we will be an encouragement to you in this new life!†And then they quote Galatians 3:27, where Paul says, “For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ.†And they quote 2 Corinthians 5:17 as well, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.†There are others, but I just share one more today, this one with a personal connection. Some of you know that took a quick trip down to Crystal Lake a few weeks ago – on our anniversary, but to hear Tom Hall, from Kentucky, preach at a gospel meeting down there. Well, when Tom got back home to Kentucky, this is what he posted. He says, “Great day at Mt Pleasant Church of Christ! Hunter Level was baptized into Christ!†And then he adds, “This other little boy wanted to make sure he could see it!!†I have never seen that before, but that is hilarious! As always, though, we share these images by way of encouragement: 1.) To see some of the good that’s happening in the Lord’s church today, but 2.) To illustrate what it means to obey the gospel. And if we can help with that in any way, we invite you to get in touch. You can send a message to info@fourlakeschurch.org, you can give me a call or send a text to 608-224-0274, or you can simply pull me aside after worship this morning, and we would love to help in any way possible. Over the past several weeks, we have returned to our study of the Sermon on the Mount. We looked at “America’s Favorite Verse,†where Jesus says, “Do not judge,†a phrase that is often taken out of context, and then we looked at “a case study in judging,†the account in Luke 7 where Jesus is invited to dinner in the home of a prominent Pharisee, but a sinful woman comes in and starts washing his feet with her tears. Today, we return to Matthew 7, and we come to a difficult verse. We know, however, that many things that are worth knowing are often difficult to learn at the beginning. We think about learning to drive. Other than getting the basics through drivers’ ed at school, I basically had two lessons in driving a manual transmissions: One lesson with dad where I learned the basics of using a clutch and shifting the gears, and then (once I had recovered from that), a second lesson a few weeks later where I could practice without dad wincing every time I stalled the car! We had one car: Our family minivan, a 1988 Plymouth Voyager with a 5-speed manual transmission. But there again, learning to drive stick might have been difficult at the time, but it was so worth it! And hopefully we can say the same thing about the verse that we are about to study in Matthew 7. In context, Jesus has just explained the danger of judging. He’s encouraged his disciples to judge in the right way and by using the proper standard, he illustrates by picturing a guy focusing on the speck in a brothers eye, all while ignoring the log that’s sticking out of his own eye. And then, in one of the most loving sermons ever preached, Jesus transitions to what appears to be a rather harsh statement. In fact, it almost comes across as being a little bit...judgmental, because in Matthew 7:6, Jesus says, “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.†So again, some may see this as being a bit of a contradiction. On one hand, we are not to be judgmental, but on the other hand Jesus turns around and starts referring to people as dogs and swine. This morning, then, I want us to pay attention to what Jesus says here. I want us to start by looking at the great value of what we have in Jesus, then we’ll look at the character of the people Jesus warns us about here, and then we’ll close by considering the danger of sharing Jesus with those who have such an attitude. I. First of all, though, I want us to appreciate THE GREAT VALUE OF WHAT WE HAVE IN JESUS. And I think this is one aspect of this passage that is often overlooked. Yes, Jesus starts with a negative; he starts with a “DO NOT.†However, before we get to the negative, let’s not miss the positive here. The positive in this passage is that we as God’s people have something of tremendous value. We have the gospel. We have the good news about Jesus. And the Lord uses two very positive terms here, starting with something he refers to as being “holy.†The word “holy†refers to something that is different, something that has been set apart for some special reason. If you can imagine getting the latest and greatest phone, for example, we wouldn’t imagine handing that over to a 3-year old. And the reason is: The 3-year old doesn’t understand how expensive and how fragile that phone is. Well, to the Jews, this reference to something that is “holy†would have been an obvious reference to the sacrifices that were being carried out in the temple. The temple was holy, the priests were holy, their garments were holy, the utensils were holy, the altar was holy, and certainly the sacrifices were also holy. All of these things were set apart, special, dedicated to God. If you were grilling out with your family, you couldn’t just go grab the utensils from the temple, because those utensils were holy, dedicated to God, set aside for some special purpose. But if that’s true for the utensils, then it is even more true for the sacrifice itself. The offering, if it could be eaten, was only eaten by the priests. And the Law of Moses also specified that the leftovers were to be completely burned with fire. They did this to avoid having the leftovers eaten by scavengers. So, to throw a holy sacrifice to a dog would have been absolutely terrible, a sin against the Lord himself. We know, however, that Jesus is not talking about literal sacrifices, but instead, he’s using this as a picture. Under the New Covenant, Peter describes Jesus himself as being “the Holy and Righteous One†(in Acts 3:14). As our perfect sacrifice, Jesus is holy, and really, everything associated with the Lord is holy as well. The scriptures are holy, the message is holy, all of these things have been set apart as being separate and special to the Lord. Let us appreciate what we have! And in the parallel reference, Jesus also mentions “pearls.†Most of us know that pearls come from oysters through a long, natural process, and we know that pearls are valuable. Just a few chapters later, in fact (in Matthew 13:45-46), Jesus will go on to tell a short parable about a merchant who finds a pearl of great value out in a field, so he sells all that he owns and buys that field, all to get the pearl. Even there, the pearl is used to illustrate the value of the gospel message. So, first of all, then, let’s realize the value of what we have. The good news about the Lord and his church is holy; it is to be treasured like a pearl of great value. II. So, we do have some positive words in this passage; however, we also have some rather shocking words as JESUS REFERS TO THE CHARACTER OF THOSE WHO FAIL TO APPRECIATE WHAT IS HOLY – HE REFERS TO THESE PEOPLE AS “DOGS†AND AS “SWINE.†And it does sound severe, but it is not unusual. In fact, we have several other passages where Jesus refers to people as various animals. There was a time when Jesus referred to wicked King Herod as a “fox.†He once referred to the scribes and the Pharisees as a “brood of vipers.†These are some strong words, but Jesus wants us to know that there are times when people act like animals. As Christians, then, we don’t judge in terms of looking down on people with judgmental contempt, but the Lord does call us to discern between those who will appreciate holy things and those who will tear us to pieces. There is a difference. And to help make the distinction, let’s start with Jesus’ reference to “dogs.†These are not cute little Chihuahuas. These are not Goldendoodles. These are not family pets. But the dogs Jesus refers to here are wild animals, more like wolves or coyotes; savage animals, dogs that would rip things to pieces; scavengers, feeding on garbage, attacking children, roaming the streets at nights. These are the dogs that would eat our dogs today. These are the dogs that ate Queen Jezebel and left nothing but her skull, and her feet, and the palms of her hands. And even among the dogs we have as pets today, as domesticated as they are, many of them still do not discriminate, do they? Maybe I’m just accustomed to Beagles (we are on Beagle #3 in our family right now), but Beagles do not discriminate. It may be a nice, juicy steak, or it might be a dead squirrel on the side of the road – a Beagle doesn’t care (steak vs. squirrel jerky – there is no difference). If it can be swallowed, they will eat it. A dozen doughnuts maybe an hour before taking the test for the Canine Good Citizen class? No problem! A 5-pound brick of $30 Boy Scout fudge straight off the kitchen table while we’re at church? No problem! Not long after we were married, we ended up cat-sitting for a few weeks (my sister had tried to smuggle a kitten into her college dorm room, and we got stuck with it when she got busted). I remember eating dinner one night and smelling something truly horrific. Our beagle came out of the cat room chewing on something, but she also had cat litter crammed in her whiskers. The point is: Dogs have no discernment, and if given something holy (if given some sacrifice straight off the altar), they will eat it, no questions asked. They don’t care whether their next meal comes off the altar or out of the garbage can. Let’s not be surprised, then, when a dog acts like a dog. Well, in a spiritual sense, the Bible sometimes uses the word “dog†to refer to the Gentiles. Paul even uses the term to refer to his fellow Jews, the “evil workers,†those who worked against the spread of the gospel – evil men who had no discernment. This is what Jesus is warning about here, the kind of person who has no real appreciation for things that are holy. As an example, I might suggest thinking back to that feast put on by the king in Daniel 5 and the handwriting on the wall. Do you remember what they were doing at that feast? In his drunkenness, the king had called for the sacred vessels that had been looted from the temple in Jerusalem back in 586 BC. The king and his friends, then, were drinking out of these vessels when God sent that message, “Numbered, Numbered, Weighed, Divided.†At that very hour, as they were drinking out of the holy vessels, Belshazzar’s kingdom was given over to the Medes and the Persians. Belshazzar was truly a dog. And then we get to the “swine.†And here again, the swine in this verse are not like the three little piggies who built the houses out of straw, and wood, and brick. This is not Miss Piggy we are talking about here, but we are talking about wild animals – feral hogs or wild boars, savage creatures who have no discernment at all. Under the Old Law, of course, pigs were unclean animals; they were not to be eaten. Just from a health perspective, we understand. We have microscopes today. Pigs carry all kinds of diseases. They are nasty animals, and they are messy. Some of you may know that my grandfather used to preach in Lynchburg, Tennessee, home of Jack Daniels’ Distillery. Whenever we would visit, we would go on walks with my grandfather on those narrow roads out in the country. I very clearly remember those huge trucks carrying the slop, the leftovers, from the distillery. Those trucks would take the nastiness, the leftovers from making whiskey, and they would drop it off at the pig farms. And the pigs loved it! We could hardly breathe when those trucks drove by (it smelled so bad), but those trucks would just back up to a field full of pigs standing in their own waste, they would open that 4-inch valve on the back, and that stuff would just shoot 20 feet out into the pig pen, and those pigs would devour every last bit of it. I’ve read that pigs will dispose of a human body for you. They don’t care. Pigs will eat anything. But they have no discretion. To them, that sour spent grain shooting out the back of a truck into a field of their own waste is more valuable than fine pearls. They have no discretion. Well, as far as I can tell, there is only one other verse in the entire Bible where pigs and dogs are mentioned together in the same verse. The reference comes in 2 Peter 2:21-22, a passage that Jerry Turley asked us to read at his memorial service. It’s one of the most unusual requests I’ve had for a funeral service, but Jerry was truly unique. It’s a reference to false teachers who have turned away from the gospel. For those who have known the truth and then choose to turn away, Peter says, “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. 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.’†This is one of the grossest verses in the entire Bible, but if you are a dog owner, you know: If your dog pukes, you’d better go grab his collar and get him out of there, because he is going in for seconds! So also, a pig, a second after getting clean, will jump right back into it. Jesus is observing here that some people are like this spiritually: Like dogs and pigs, they have no discernment, they see no value in spiritual things. III. Well, now that we’ve seen the VALUE OF WHAT WE HAVE, and now that we’ve noted JESUS’ DESCRIPTION OF THOSE WHO REALLY DON’T CARE, we come to the combination of these first two ideas with a WARNING CONCERNING THE DANGER OF SHARING WHAT WE VALUE WITH THOSE WHO HAVE DEMONSTRATED A LACK OF DISCERNMENT. From a purely physical point of view, we have the picture of someone surrounded by a pack of wild dogs or wild pigs, and they throw down their most valuable possessions, but the dogs and hogs, expecting food, are disappointed, and they turn and attack. Well, this can also happen spiritually: We may share what is truly valuable, but once that message is rejected, we have no obligation to continue. To me, then, there is a history here. I’m not pre-judging someone as not being worthy of hearing the gospel message, but I must discern: If someone has reacted unfavorably, I have no obligation to continue harassing them with the gospel over an extended period of time; in fact, Jesus clearly tells us here to move on. And this fits with what Jesus will go on to say later in Matthew. In Matthew 10, Jesus is sending out his disciples to teach and preach, and he tells them in Matthew 10:14, “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.†In other words, if someone clearly has no concern for spiritual things, keep moving. And even Jesus himself models this for us in his series of trials before the crucifixion. In Luke 23, Jesus appears before Pilate, the Roman governor, and Jesus is answering Pilate’s questions. Pilate is curious, and Jesus responds, “Are you the king of the Jews?†“It is as you say,†and so on. Jesus continued that discussion as long as Pilate was interested in learning more. However, when we get to Luke 23:9, we have Jesus appearing before King Herod. Herod was a hard-hearted stubborn man who has already rejected the evidence, and when Herod questions Jesus, Jesus says nothing. Jesus refuses to cast his pearls before swine; he refuses to give what is holy to dogs. And then we see this in the life of Paul as well. As Paul and Barnabas tried to preach the gospel in Antioch of Pisidia, the Jewish people opposed them at every opportunity, and it got to the point where Paul and Barnabas had to move along. They say (in Acts 13:46), “It was necessary that the word of God be spoken to you first; since you repudiate it and judge yourselves unworthy of eternal life, behold, we are turning to the Gentiles.†And that’s what they do. A few verses later, the Jewish leaders instigated a persecution against Paul and Barnabas, they kick them out, and Paul and Barnabas respond (in Acts 13:51) by shaking the dust off of their feet in protest and moving on (just as Jesus had instructed). There are times when it is not worth arguing! It would be like trying to reason with a dog or a pig. They have no discernment. So, for your own good and for the love of all that is holy, move on! Teach the gospel, but don’t throw your pearls before swine. Make a judgment call, and move on to those who are interested in more than an argument. Before we close, I’ll share a personal example that I shared many years ago, but back when we lived in Janesville (in the mid-90’s), we were going door-to-door putting flyers on doors. I was with one of the teenagers from the church there, we put a church brochure on a guy’s door, and a block later we started hearing someone behind us yelling, “Hey you! Hey you!†I don’t usually answer to angry people yelling “Hey you!†But this middle-aged man finally caught up to us, and he threw the flyer on the ground in front of us as he yelled in our faces at the top of his lungs, “Get this trash off my door!!!†Face red, veins bulging in his neck, this man was absolutely irate. This man was a dog, a wild pig, and there was nothing we could have said to calm him down. In fact, anything I could have said would have made the situation even worse. So, we kept moving. I made a mental note of that address. I could tell it to you right now, but I won’t, since we are live on YouTube. But I clearly remember that just a month or two later, a teenager was arrested for tackling and stealing a purse from a 90-something year old woman in the Walmart parking lot. Just imagine tackling a 90-year old woman to get her purse. I get mad just thinking about it. Well, as I was reading the newspaper article, the address of that teenage punk jumped right off the page at me – that teenager lived at the same address where this middle-aged God hater also lived. It was the same address. At that point, I understood at least a tiny bit of what was going on in that home. Dogs were being raised by dogs. By the way, I looked that address up this week, then I pulled up CCAP (Wisconsin’s portal for accessing court records), and sure enough, the same family is still living in that house! That kid has now had multiple paternity suits filed against him, failure to pay child support (over and over again), felony possession of a firearm, felony drug possession with intent to deliver, child neglect, disorderly conduct, hit and run with damage to property, hit and run to an unattended vehicle, a ticked for unnecessary acceleration, operating while suspended (several times), operating a motor vehicle without proof of insurance (several times), non-registration of vehicle (several times), speeding (30-34 MPH over in a 55 zone), operating while revoked (several times), felony bail jumping, retail theft, a judgment for personal injury as the result of an automobile accident, resisting or obstructing an officer, felony burglary of a mobile home, displaying unauthorized registration, failure to stop at a stop sign, felony burglary to a dwelling, obstructing an officer, and on and on. Again, dogs are often raised by dogs, and it would have done no good for me to argue with this man about the gospel, so we decided to move along. Conclusion: So far this morning, we’ve looked at the value of what we have in Jesus, we’ve noted that not everybody appreciates hearing this message of salvation, and so we’ve learned that we must have some discernment as we share the good news. As we close, I’d like to make two brief observations as we apply this passage to our situation today. First of all, we are not to use this passage as an excuse not to share the good news with others. In our culture, it is so easy for us to say to ourselves, “The world is so terrible! There’s no way anybody would ever accept this message; therefore, I just won’t say anything to anybody!†We can’t say that! And yet, that sometimes seems to reflect what we are actually doing. I’m just saying that we can be so careful that we don’t give what’s holy to dogs, that we don’t give what’s holy to anybody. And we can be so careful not to cast pearls before swine, that we fail to share the pearl of great price with the world. And if that’s our reasoning this morning, if we never share the gospel because we’re pretty sure nobody would ever accept it, then I want to suggest that we have failed to understand the gospel itself. Jesus himself came to this world to save sinners, to seek and to save the lost. We are now on the leading edge of that mission. It’s up to us now. So, first of all, let’s not use this passage as an excuse to never say anything. But secondly, let’s also remember how important it is to have patience. Many times, someone may object to the gospel, but there’s still a spark there. It’s not a hard “no.†And as long as they are not argumentative, as long as they are open, there may be a value to continuing. In other words, we need to learn how to distinguish between a Pilate and a Herod. And there’s obviously a value to praying about it. We don’t automatically quit when we hit the least of resistance. But there is some wisdom involved. Above all, we have something valuable, and we are responsible for sharing it. In just a moment, Josh will lead us in a song, but before we sing, let’s go to God in prayer: Our Father in Heaven, Thank you for loving us, and thank you for sending your Son to save us. We stand in awe of your power and wisdom, and we ask for your wisdom as we reach out to the world around us. We come to you today in Jesus’ name. AMEN. To comment on this lesson: fourlakeschurch@gmail.com