Dogs, Pigs, and Finding the Pearl — Duane Troyer

I greet everybody in Jesus name this morning, and I'm glad to be here with you, and I'm glad for this place to gather and a beautiful, beautiful day to gather. Yeah, I had a lot of thoughts about the opening too there, I appreciate it, I probably won't take time to expound much on it.

But I can identify with things that I wish would go away in my life that I just continually struggle with, and then every now and then somebody will say something that makes me realize like, oh, it's good for me, you know, something I wish, some quality I see in others that I wish I could attain better.

The Sermon on the Mount as Christianity’s Foundation

But let's take another look at the Sermon on the Mount here today. For those of you who may be the first time here, we've spent the best portion of the last year going through what's called the Sermon on the Mount, what I believe and I think Jesus expressed is foundational to Christianity.

The hearing and doing these teachings is foundational to Christianity, as I was sitting back there watching Norman here, I was checking out this crack in the wall, and I can almost guarantee you that this is not a wall problem, this is a foundation problem.

And that is, all the cracking and crumbling and sagging that goes on in Christianity in our personal lives or in this thing called the Christian Church has, I think it's pretty safe to say, like always, almost always there's a foundational problem here, and somewhere we're not, somewhere these teachings of Jesus that he gave here on the mountain are not being heard and done.

So anyway, I want to get into the next section, we're in Matthew 7, why don't we stand up and we'll read this, Matthew 7, verses 6 to 11. Do not give what is holy to the dogs, and do not throw your pearls before swine, or they will trample them under their feet and turn and tear you to pieces.

Ask and it will be given to you, seek and you will find, knock and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened. Or what man is there among you who when his son asks for a loaf will give him a stone, or if he asks him for a fish he will not give him a snake, will he?

If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father, who is in heaven, give what is good to those who ask him? Let's pray. Our Father in heaven, we pray that you would be with us today, and thank you for gathering us all together, and I pray, Lord, that you would give us understanding of these words that you gave us.

Help us to draw out of them something that would draw us closer to you, and give us this heart that wants to seek, and to ask, and that longs to be with you, and one with you, and we ask that you would guide my thoughts, and that you would help us to look into this in light of all the treasures that you would like us to have.

Not Casting Pearls Before Those Who Despise Them

We ask these things in Jesus' name, amen. So the first verse here that we're looking at is verse 6. Do not give what is holy to the dogs, and do not throw your pearls before swine, for they will trample them under their feet, turn, and tear you to pieces.

Now, what a strange teaching. Jesus is giving this illustration of perhaps a man with a bag with some really precious and valuable pearls in there. And he's going along, and here comes a pack of dogs, or a herd of pigs, you know, the big, ugly kind that have the capability to tear human beings to pieces.

And he takes these pearls, and he offers them to them, and after all, these are valuable, right? They're precious. They're pearls. But these beasts who value nothing except something to eat and to fill their bellies take one bite out of these things and decide they're nothing to eat, and they're dissatisfied with what they've been offered, and they turn around, and they turn on this man, and they tear him to pieces and eat him.

What a devastation. These pearls are marred from being bitten on. They're trampled into the mud, and the man who possessed them at one time is tore up and dead. The pigs and the dogs are the winners. So Jesus is implying here that the problem here was that these pearls were offered.

These pearls that were valuable were offered to something that didn't value them. So what's going on here? What does this mean for us? Pretty certain Jesus is not just giving us some instructions on how to raise pigs and dogs, or how not to.

The Kingdom as the Pearl of Great Price

So we call this sermon the Sermon on the Mount, but Jesus didn't call it that. He called this sermon, or these teachings, he called them the Good News of the Kingdom. In Matthew 4, that's what the Scripture calls this teaching that Jesus is bringing.

He is preaching the Good News of the Kingdom. It's good news, it's precious, and this precious promise has been long waited on. For thousands of years there's been this promise that there will come a king, he will deliver the people, he will rule forever, he'll sit on David's throne.

The promise goes further back than David. It goes back to Moses who said, yet one more prophet will come after me and he will tell you God's word. It goes further back than that. It goes to Abraham who, it was promised that in your seed all nations will be blessed.

And it even goes further back than that, all the way back to the Garden of Eden where there was this deliverer promised who would crush the serpent's head and he would restore to humans what they had.

This relationship and this partnership that God had created when he made Adam and Eve and put them there in the garden and said, keep this and dress it and multiply it and cover the earth with my goodness.

That work was stopped and there's a promise that someone would come and restore that again. And so this kingdom was highly anticipated. The Psalms and the poetry and the Hebrew literature is full of this promise.

They were familiar with the idea that they would be promised that they would be rulers of creation. The Psalms and the prophet use terms like the kingdom of God, the Messiah, the proclamation of the good news.

And this kind of literature is drilled into every Hebrew boy and girl and they are familiar with it. Every mother is longing to give birth to this promised one who would come. It's a highly, highly prized promise.

It was a pearl of great price. Jesus refers to this kingdom later. He refers to this kingdom as a pearl of great price. In Matthew 13 he says, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant who is searching for pearls and when he finds this one of really great price, he goes and he sells everything that he has so that he has the means to go buy this one.

So I think it's reasonable to think that what Jesus is saying here when he's saying, don't cast your pearls before a swine, that he's saying, don't take the kingdom of God and give it to, but who are the pigs and the dogs?

So dogs and pigs are, the scriptures hardly ever have anything good to say about them. They're these unclean animals. The dogs are these creatures that return to their own vomit and eat it again and the pigs go wallowing in the mire.

You can clean them off and they go right back into the mud holes. They're not considered a good desirable animal. And so the people, the Jews, would refer to outsiders, those unclean people, as dogs and pigs.

The Gentiles, in numerous places, the Gentiles were referred to as dogs. I don't know if this is in scripture, but I've heard that they considered the Romans in particular as pigs. But Jesus here, he's breaking this kind of thinking down.

He's already been saying things like, you know those loving things you should do to your neighbors and your brother? You should greet your brother and those things? Everybody does that. But you, I want you to love your enemies.

I want you to bless the people who curse you. I want you to not only greet your brethren. And so Jesus is breaking this down and he's presenting this idea that those who are not fit for the kingdom of God are not identified by their nationality or their race or their class or their caste or whether they're a slave or a landowner or all these kind of things.

And if the point isn't clear yet to the Jews, it's going to be clear as soon as he comes down off this mountain because who's the first person? When Jesus comes down off the mountain, who's the first person that he extends this precious thing about the kingdom, the thing he came to do, this bringing healing and restoration to people?

The first person he meets is a leper, an unclean leper. And he heals him. And who's the second person he meets? It's a Roman centurion. And he heals his son that's at the point of death. Maybe died. I'm not sure.

Discernment, Readiness, and the Meaning of “Dogs and Pigs”

But anyway, it's becoming real clear to them that Jesus is thinking outside the box concerning who are the pigs and the dogs. But what Jesus is not saying is he's not saying that everyone under any circumstances is worthy of this pearl or is ready for this pearl.

We just got done, and we talked about this in the last message, Jesus just got done talking about judge not, that you be not judged. And we talked about what Jesus, in saying that Jesus is not saying we should throw out our moral compass and not have a discernment about what's right and wrong, what's good and evil.

We also talked about how he's not talking about that we should not discriminate at all. And this teaching here makes that obvious. He's saying that you should have a moral compass and that you should do some discernment here and you should evaluate some things.

Not everyone values the kingdom of God. Not everyone considers this the good news of the kingdom. Not everybody considers this is the precious promise. The dogs and the pigs here are people who don't value heavenly things.

They do not value the things of the spirit of God. They are people like Esau who lightly esteemed his birthright and he sold it for a bowl of soup. They're not ready for it. It doesn't mean that they might not get there, but they're not ready for it and therefore you are going to devalue, you're going to ruin this pearl and yourself by sharing this something that's super valuable with someone who sees no value in it.

That's one of the ways that we can devalue something because there's a disconnect between you and this other person. You found something and it's really precious to you and you're trying to persuade someone else and insist upon the preciousness of this and he just doesn't see it.

And two things happen. One is you're devaluing this thing that's so precious for you. And the other thing is you're potentially turning this person further away from seeing the value of it. There's examples in the Old Testament of when this happened.

Solomon, when he was king, God granted, gave him all this splendor and glory in the kingdom and what did he do? He brought in all kinds of people from all over the world and he shared and he showed this splendor to them and they did not value the God who gave these things.

And by and by, these strange women were his downfall and they rent his heart from God. Hezekiah, when he was king, he showed those messengers of Babylon his full house of treasures. He showed them all the silver and the gold and these valuable vessels, things that were holy, things that were sacred, things that were of and about God, things that represented God.

He showed these to people who had no interest in this God. And Isaiah the prophet came and he said, this is what's going to happen. This same Babylon, who you shared these things with, is going to come in and they're going to take all these vessels and they're going to take them out of here and they're going to take them to Babylon and your kingdom is going to be destroyed.

This principle is seen in other teachings, like Proverbs 9, 7, where he says, he that reprove of the scorner gets himself to shame. Jesus told his disciples that when you go out preaching and you take this gospel of the kingdom into all the world, once people have shown to you that they're not interested in it, shake the dust from your feet and go, move on.

This same principle is applied when Jesus spoke in parables and he told these stories that the person who longed and desired for truth could get it out of him and the other people just heard a story. So practically, what does this mean for us?

Evangelism, Church Membership, and Protecting Sacred Fellowship

I've often heard this verse used in reference to like not evangelizing, like not taking the gospel to people that aren't coming to you or people that aren't asking about it. And though I think the principle can apply to some extent, like I think we can and do sometimes waste our time and energy by trying to insist the good news upon someone that just scorns it and doesn't want it.

But some years ago, I came to the conclusion that I don't think this is the main place where these kind of things happen, because for one thing, Jesus said that we should take the gospel into all the world and we should preach it to all creatures.

And not only that, they are not the ones who turn around and rend us. So I might try to preach, after all, isn't it, I mean, the scriptures say that it's not the will of God that any man should perish, but that all should come to the knowledge of truth.

I think it would be the will of God that every human being in the whole world would at one point or another have the gospel preached to them or presented to them. Now, if I go out and I present this or preach this to people and they mock me, they ridicule me, they say all kinds of bad things to me, that's not turning and rending me to pieces.

The time when that really happens is when we bring people who do not value the kingdom of God and we bring them into the fold. And we bring them in and we make them a part of us. We take people who are not really seeking this pearl of great price and we baptize them, we bring them into our love feasts, and we make them a part of us.

There's a disconnect between what they value and we value. Those are the people who will turn around and they will rend the body of Christ. It was later, after I had came to those conclusions, that I found out that numerous early church writers wrote exactly that.

The Didache says something along those lines when it's talking about communion and it says, let no one eat or drink of your Eucharist except those who have been baptized in the name of the Lord. For concerning this, the Lord has said, do not give that which is holy to the dogs.

Tertullian wrote about it. Others wrote about that same thing. I do think it's a broad principle that is applicable in more areas than just that. But I think those are some of the real ways that it happens, has happened, and does happen to people today.

Seeking God Through Desire, Prayer, and Persistence

So God follows this same principle with us. He shares his treasures with those who see them as treasures. He sheds light to the person who wants light and he sheds more light to the person who appreciates light.

He gives truth and more truth and more truth to the person who loves and desires truth. He gives his kingdom to those who deeply desire it and value it. And that brings us to the next thing he taught here.

Ask and it will be given to you. Seek and you will find. Knock and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks, receives. And he who seeks, finds. And to him who knocks, it'll be opened. The treasures of God are for the desperate.

They are for those who long for them. The truth is usually hid in plain sight. Um, it's visible to those who long for it and it's invisible to those who don't want it. God dwells in enough obscurity that we must seek to find him.

And he dwells in enough light that if we seek, we can find him. You know, sometimes I play hide and seek with my little children. And I'm never far away. I'm always just around the corner and partly visible and easily findable.

And yet these little guys who can't see over everything, they really have to look for me. And something like that is the way God is. He needs to be sought after and yet he's very findable. When Paul, we read in Acts, when Paul was preaching there on Mars Hill, he said, he made mankind that he would seek God.

If perhaps they might grope for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us. He made mankind to seek him. And that is one of the distinguishing marks between a man of God and a man of the world.

The one seeks God and the other one doesn't. And I think perhaps, I don't know about all, but I think perhaps the huge majority of problems in a believer's life and even within the church is a lack of an intense desire to know God.

And a lack of a deep longing to seek and to press into the things of God. We can set up all kinds of structures. We can come up with programs. We can come up with accountability groups. We can come up with discipleship classes.

We can come up with all kinds of things like that. And if the heart to seek God is not there, they are all worthless. Notice how Jesus here first says, ask and it will be given. Seek and you will find.

And then he says, knock and it'll be open to you. I tend to think there's like a progression here. If someone here told me of some great man somewhere who has a great estate and he's just a really great man and you really benefit from knowing this man and it would spark my interest.

First I would start asking questions. What's great about him? What does he do? Where does he live? And I would gain knowledge about this. My next step would be to go seek him. And I would go. I would seek.

I would cross the mountains and through the rivers. And I would go until I've sought and I've found his place. I'd look at his estate and I'd start gaining more than what I had heard when I just asked.

I'd start seeing and experiencing some of this greatness. But if I really want to know this man, what's my next step? I'll be knocking on his door. And I'll be knocking and knocking until he himself opens the door and I get to know this man.

Those are the people who God reveals himself to. And he enters a relationship with that person because that person and God have something in common. And if I can drive any point home today, this is the point I'd like to drive home, is that God does for us the thing that he's asking us to do for him.

The Father’s Pursuit of the Lost

In Luke 15, there's these three parables of something that is lost and then a really diligent seeking after. There's the parable of the lost sheep. And the shepherd, he leaves the 99 and he goes through the hills and the mountains and the wilderness and the gullies and the brush.

And he searches and searches until he finds this one lost sheep. And he brings it home and he calls his friends together and they all rejoice. And then there's the parable of the lost coin, about the woman who lost the coin.

And she lights a lamp and she sweeps the house and she cleans and cleans until she finds this lost coin. And then she calls all her friends together and they all rejoice about this thing that's lost. And the next parable is of the prodigal son.

And the son is gone. He's lost. He's left. And the father is daily, he's watching out the way in which he went and he's looking for him to return. But the reason I'm convinced that the father was doing that constantly or regularly is because it says once the son turned and started coming home, while he was a long way off, the father saw him and he forgot everything else and he left everything else and he ran out to meet him and to be united with his son again.

These three parables are depicting the heart of the father. They're depicting the heart of the father. A father who so deeply longs for us. He so deeply longs to know us and be united with us that he leaves everything for that.

And that very same thing that he does, he wants us to do for him. And when we do, there's a connection. There's a oneness. There's a knowing each other. We are of one heart and one will. It produces a deep and meaningful love, faith, relationship.

Not just a relationship based on feelings and emotions. Neither is it just a relationship based on knowledge and logic. It is a relationship that the maker of heaven and earth and us come to know each other.

And I think this is what Paul was preaching on Mars Hill. I think it's what Enoch had when it says that he walked with God. I think it's what Abraham had when it says that he believed him. You know, in the book of Daniel, there's these couple times in the book of Daniel where the angel is communicating with Daniel.

And in the Masoretic text, it says, the angel says to Daniel, Oh man greatly beloved. Or depending what translation you read, it might say, Oh man highly esteemed. But you know what the Septuagint says?

It says, Oh man of great desires. I'm sorry, it says, Oh man of desires. It says, Oh man of desires. And if I think of someone who would be called a man of desires, I would think it to be a man with deep longings, deep yearnings and searchings for something.

That would be a man of desires. And I think for that reason, he is rightly called a man greatly beloved or highly esteemed by God. And we see this same thing when we read through the Song of Songs. There's this intense longing for each other between the bride and the groom.

You know, when one of them realizes that they're not quite sure where the other one is, especially when the bride realizes she's not quite sure where the groom is. Like, it consumes her thoughts. She goes and she searches and she asks the keepers in the city, Have you seen him?

I need to know where he is. Just a little snippet of this kind of heart there in the Song of Songs is in chapter 3, verses 1 to 4. It says, In the night on my bed I sought him whom my soul loves. I sought him but did not find him.

I called him but he did not hear me. I will rise now and go about the city and the marketplaces and the streets. I will seek him whom my soul loves. I sought him and did not find him. The watchmen who do the rounds in the city found me.

And I said to them, Have you seen him whom my soul loves? If you get toward the end of this song, the groom says in chapter 8, verse 6 and 7, it says, Set me as a seal upon your heart. As a seal upon your arm.

For love is as strong as death. Jealousy as cruel as Hades. Her spark are sparks of fire. Even the flames thereof. Much water will not be able to quench love. Nor will rivers drown it. If a man would give all his possessions for love, men would utterly despise them.

Our desire, the desire within us to find and know our creator, should be so great that if someone would come and offer us everything in the world to buy it from us, we should utterly despise the offer.

The Kingdom’s Worth and the Fullness of Christ

In Matthew 13, it says, The kingdom of heaven, in verse 44, The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure hidden in the field, which a man found and hid again. And from joy over it, he goes and sells what he has and buys the field.

And again, The kingdom of heaven is like a merchant seeking fine pearls. And upon finding one pearl of great value, he went and sold all that he had to buy it. He's saying the kingdom of heaven is like this.

Like a man who was walking out through the field, somewhere out through the field, and he came upon a treasure. And what did he do with it? He quickly went and hid it. And he went home and he sold everything he had so that he would have the means to go and buy that field and make a rightful claim to this treasure.

There was nothing that could stop him. He was willing to forsake everything for it. The same way with the man who found this pearl. He found it. He went back home. He sold everything he had so that he would have the means to buy that.

This kingdom of God, this kingdom of heaven that Jesus said, comes not without word observation, but is within us. It's a new creation. It's a new reign that begins at the heart of issues. It's a place where we get to the root of things.

It's a place where we must go beyond simple commands and simple do's and don'ts, beyond the words of paper and ink, in order to find it. And the Father knows this. He knew it all along. When the Psalms and the poetry are full of this expression, let me see your face.

Would you reveal yourself to me? Make your face shine upon us. Let us hear you. People who long for God are expressing that and have been all along. Philip did it to Jesus. He said to Jesus, show us the Father and it'll be enough.

Show us the Father and it'll all be enough. And Jesus said, Philip, how long have I been with you? And you still don't know who I am. If you have seen me, you have seen the Father. You know, Paul said in Colossians 2, he said, in Jesus dwells all the fullness of God in bodily form.

In all the fullness of the Godhead, all the fullness of deity is dwelling in this one man, Jesus Christ. He also says there, in him are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. All the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.

So look nowhere else. It's all found in him. If we look at the life of Jesus, at the words of Jesus, at the behavior of Jesus, at the mind of Jesus, we are looking into someone in whom is hid all wisdom and all knowledge.

Everything that we would need, or should need, or should even get is hid there. Now the fact that it's hid means that it's probably not evident to the casual observer. It must be asked for. It must be searched for.

It must be knocked for. The Father gave us this treasure in a form that we can relate to, on a level that we can identify with. He did not keep these treasures, all these treasures of wisdom and knowledge.

He did not keep them in some unperceivable form. He didn't share these wisdom and truth in a way that they could not be digested by us. He gave them in the form of a human being. Someone that was right down here on our level.

God did what every reasonable father does. And that brings us to the next thing that Jesus said here in Matthew 7. He said, Or what man is there among you who when his son asks for a loaf, will he give him a stone?

Or if he asks for a fish, he will not give him a snake, will he? If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your father, who is in heaven, give what is good to those who ask him?

God Gives Himself in a Form We Can Receive

Physically, I'm sure none of us would ever do this. If your son asks you for a piece of bread, you pick up a stone. I do think that sometimes when our sons or our children ask us a question, our little children ask us a question, and we give them some highfalutin lofty answer that is way above their level, it's kind of like giving them a stone.

Or when they can't digest it, they can't comprehend it. And that's not what God did when he gave us Jesus. He gave us, when he gave us all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge, he gave it to us on a very comprehendable, relatable, in a very relatable form, in the man Jesus Christ.

And so that begging question that sits deep within us human beings, whether we've ever spoken it or not, show me God, show me my maker. God has heard that. And he sent his son and he showed it to us, showed him, he showed himself to us.

And yet, the multitudes miss it. Even those who seek God pass over it and dismiss it. In this passage we're reading today in Matthew, it says, seek and you will find. But you know that Jesus also said, many will seek and will not be able.

In Luke, he said, strive to enter in through the narrow gate. And then he says, for many will seek and will not be able. People have their assumptions, they have their expectations of how God is, of where he is, of what he is.

And they look for him, but they look amiss. And they ask for him, but they ask amiss. It happened when Jesus was here. When he was 12 years old, he went missing. And what was the people's immediate assumption?

They assumed that he was with their kinsfolk. They assumed he was among them. And this is a common problem that people make. They think, oh, my kinsmen and my people are good people, and God is among us.

And they just assume that. But when they went to seeking for him, they found out he's not there at all. He's not there at all. Another time that people sought for Jesus and didn't find him where they thought they'd find him, is after he had died.

And Mary, Magdalene, maybe, and the other Mary, or a couple women, went to the grave. And they were going to find Jesus there. And they were going to put some ointments or something on him. And they looked in there, and he was not there.

And some angels were there in dazzling clothes. And they said, what seek you? And they said, we're looking for Jesus. And they said, why do you seek the living one? Why do you seek the living one among the dead?

This is another common problem. When people are looking for the living one, they are looking for Christ. They are looking for God among dead religions, among dead structures, among with dead faith that has no works, or with dead works that have no faith.

They look for it among dead saints, and dead covenants, and all kinds of death. And I think what God is saying, or would want to say to us, is why seek you the living among the dead? He's not there. There was once a band of people who did come seeking for Jesus.

And they did find him. It was in the Garden of Gethsemane. And it was a band of officers and soldiers. And they had spears, and staves, and lanterns, and torches. And I think they were expecting a really big deal.

And when they came, and Jesus said, whom seek ye? They said, Jesus of Nazareth. And Jesus said, I am he. And they all fell backwards. They were blown away. They were taken aback. I think they were taken aback at the simplicity, at the meekness, at the harmlessness of this man who they came out as a band of soldiers to capture.

And so it goes with many seekers. Paul warned about this in Corinthians, that he was concerned that these people would be beguiled and be carried away from the simplicity that is in Christ. When Jesus said, he that seeks to save his life will lose it.

And he that loses his life for my sake will find it. In that little kernel of wisdom is the answer to finding God and to knowing our maker. You know, Jesus said, ask and it'll be given. When Jesus is promoting a partnership, he's promoting a relationship.

And he's inviting us into this partnership. It's what he had intended in the beginning. When he made Adam and Eve in the garden as rulers over his creation, to partner with him and to spread this goodness of God over the whole earth.

And today, his teaching here, he's wanting us to ask him for what we need. Now, we might ask, like, why? Because he's told us already in this same sermon, he's told us that he already knows what we need before we ask.

It would totally make rational sense to us if Jesus would say, God already knows what you need before you ask, so don't bother asking. But that's not what he says. Rather, he says something like, God already knows what you need before you ask, therefore ask.

What's that about? It's because he wants this partnership. He wants this relationship. He's wanting our will to become his will. He's wanting those two wills to become one. When those wills are in conflict, he wants to communicate until they are together.

Prayer, Surrender, and the Will of the Father

In the garden of Gethsemane, Jesus asked God to remove this cup. Did the Father do it? Was it as simple as ask what you will and it'll be given to you? Jesus himself was asking for something and it was not being granted to him.

Jesus asked multiple times. Until his will was surrendered and he said, but not my will, but your will be done. Until he came to that point where he was ready and willing to lose his life for the will of the Father.

And therein was the secret. It was at that moment that he had angelic support. It was at that moment that he had support from heaven's angels, from there on out he could endure the cross. He could look at his friends and say, don't weep for me, weep for yourself.

He seemed to be more concerned that his mother would be taken care of than what would happen with himself. He had totally lost his life. There's a number of places in the scriptures where it says, ask what you will and it'll be done.