Sermon series: Sermon on the Mount

Stay Out of the Barnyard

Matthew 7:6

PSBC

6/11/00

In a nutshell: We are sacred, and our message is like precious pearls. A Christian life without consistently Christian actions and a Christian message given in the wrong place will have the same results and consequences as feeding wild dogs the sacrifices from the Temple and putting precious pearls in the path of an angry pig. Our message is for everyone. And we assure a better reception of our message when we follow the teachings of the Sermon on the Mount.

I. Introduction

A. Life in the Barnyard

1. Joke

A man became disenchanted with the city life he was living. He decided to move to the country and start a chicken farm. He bought a farmhouse with some land around it and, after he had moved in, he bought 200 baby chicks. But they all quickly died. So, he bought 200 more baby chicks, but again, they all died a short time later.

Puzzled and distressed, the man wrote to the county agricultural agent and described everything that had happened. He concluded his letter, "I want very much to be a successful chicken farmer. Therefore, can you tell me: Have I been planting the chicks too close together or too deep?" Whereupon the county agent wrote back and said, "I can't answer your question until you send me a soil sample."

2. Transition

Well, the fact is, none of us in this room are farmers, and few of us have connections to the farm. So, when Jesus uses barnyard illustrations, like he does in the verse we'll be looking at today, it's hard for most of us to get a clear handle on what He's talking about. We simply don't have the experience-base that the people of Jesus' day had.

So, since most of us, need a little help, I've decided to show you about four minutes from Walt Disney's movie, "Old Yeller". Because I think it will give us the frame of reference we need to visualize what Jesus is trying to tell us in Matthew 7:6.

B. Video clip from "Old Yeller" of marking the pigs.

Let me set up the scene that you're going to see...

The young man in this video clip is trying to be a good pioneer farmer. He and his dog, Old Yeller, are tracking some wild pigs in the woods, so he can catch, and brand the pigs for his family to use. You'll see, that Old Yeller, the dog, helps him in this process. Watch... (show video clip.)

Pigs can be mean and dangerous. Dogs can be vicious. And Jesus warns us, to be careful of both of them. Open your Bibles to...

Matthew 7:6
6 "Do not give dogs what is sacred; do not throw your pearls to pigs. If you do, they may trample them under their feet, and then turn and tear you to pieces.

II. 4 Questions

In my experience, I've encountered a lot of Christians who like to quote this verse as an excuse. An excuse that keeps them from sharing the love of God and the message of salvation with people who are hard cases, or who seem not to care at all about a relationship with God. And you know what an excuse is? An excuse is the skin of reason stretched around a lie. And to use this verse as an excuse is the farthest thing from Jesus' mind that could ever be imagined.

If you don't believe me, just listen to Jesus' words that are recorded in this same book, as the very last thing that Jesus says to His disciples...

Matthew 28:19-20
19 Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,
20 and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.""

-Now, do you think difficult people are excluded in the term, "ALL NATIONS?"
-Do you think that Jesus just forgot to mention that people who are not readily receptive to the gospel message are the exception to "all nations"?
-Do you think He made a mistake in giving the Great Commission? OR
...Do you think there is more to this dog and pig thing than we've previously thought?

To help guide us this morning, I want to answer 4 questions...
1. Who are the dogs?
2. What is sacred?
3. Who are the pigs?
4. What are our pearls?

A. Who are the dogs?

In the Greek language, there are two words that can be translated "dog". And it's important that we understand which of those words Jesus was using when He said, "Do not give dogs what is sacred."

The two words are KUON and KUNARION. Kunarion is what we call a diminutive form of the word, KUON. KUNARION means, little dog or puppy. It refers to a household pet. Jesus uses it in a conversation with a woman in...

Matthew 15:26-27
26 He replied, "It is not right to take the children's bread and toss it to their dogs."
27 "Yes, Lord," she said, "but even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters' table."

KUNARION are the Bentley's, the Buddy's, or the Old Yeller's of our church family. They're our pets.

But KUON is a different word, entirely. It refers to the mangy street dogs that roamed the city streets, often in packs, feeding on any filth or garbage that they could find.

So, who are these mangy street dogs that Jesus is talking about here? Well, Jesus doesn't identify them by name, but the Apostle Paul, under the direction of God's Holy Spirit, does...

Philippians 3:2
2 Watch out for those dogs, those men who do evil, those mutilators of the flesh.

As you read the context of what Paul is writing, the people he identifies as "dogs", are those who have rejected God's word and set themselves up as the standard for truth. These dogs want to destroy our confidence in God. They have set themselves up as enemies of God. We would call them self-centered, self-assured, egotistical, self-absorbed people–there is a person like this who writes a column in the religion section of our local paper each Saturday.

And to those people, we are not to give "what is sacred or holy."

B. What is Sacred?

That leads me to the second question. What is sacred that we're not supposed to feed these dogs?

Again, Jesus doesn't tell us specifically in this context.

Let me put a parenthesis at this point, because I want to teach you a principle you need to understand when you study the Bible, and that will help in this context.

If you don't understand something that Jesus says in the Gospels, or if what He says seems cloudy, or He doesn't fully explain what He means... check out what guys like Luke, or Paul, or Peter, or John wrote in their letters just a few years after Jesus spoke, on the same subject.

Jesus gives us the reason for this principle in

John 16:12-14
12 "I have much more to say to you, more than you can now bear.
13 But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all truth. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come.
14 He will bring glory to me by taking from what is mine and making it known to you.

When Jesus left the earth and ascended to heaven after His resurrection, He gave all believers a special gift–the Holy Spirit of God is present in every believer–each one of you. The Holy Spirit is in us to guide us into all truth. That includes understanding things that Jesus felt His disciples couldn't handle while He walked and talked on this earth. So, that's the principle of Bible Study, now let's apply it.

The issue of what is sacred or holy is one of those things that is revealed later on, and is found in Peter's writings...

1 Peter 2:9
9 But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.

Friends, the thing that should not be fed to self-centered, self-assured, egotistical, self-absorbed people, is you. You are a chosen person, you are a royal priest, you are a part of a holy nation, you belong to God.

And the way you become "dog food" is by not paying attention to the things that Jesus has so meticulously taught in this Sermon on the Mount.

Picture: The picture that Jesus is painting takes place at the Temple sacrifice. A portion of the sacrifice was given back to the person who brought it, a portion was burned on the altar, and a portion of it was given to the priest and his family as part of their pay for being a priest.

The fact is that this kind of barbeque process attracted these hungry packs of dogs (Kuon), who were looking for food. But a good Jew would have no part in giving a portion of what was holy (a sacrifice to God), to these wild dogs. That would be a desecration. That would be an abomination. That would be bringing ill-repute on the name of God and what was special to Him.

Illustration: A few years ago, after the Dallas Cowboys football star, Deon Sanders became a Christian, he showed such a radical change in behavior and lifestyle that many of the papers around the country carried the story of his new faith in Christ.

A lot of people were skeptical, though...including some of his teammates. So, shortly after his conversion, when the Cowboys were on a road trip, some of Deon's "buddies" paid a call girl $100 to wait for Deon in his hotel room after the team meeting. They said, if you can get him into bed with you, you'll get an additional $100, plus whatever he gives you.

One of the other Christian guys heard about the plan and told Deon. Deon didn't go to his room that night, but got another room in the hotel. Because he knew that if he gave into temptation he would have been the brunt of his teammates jokes and they would have torn his Christian testimony apart like wild dogs.

The thing Jesus is teaching here is so simple, yet so profound. When you go out of your way to make the teachings from the Sermon on the Mount a part of your life, you don't give people, who want to see Christianity fail, a chance to see it fail. Your life authenticates the Christian message. But, when you take your faith lightly, and blow off these key Sermon on the Mount principles, you're feeding what is sacred to dogs.

C. Who are the Pigs? And What are the Pearls?

The third and fourth questions, I'd like to consider together. The third question is, Who are the Pigs?; and the fourth question is What are our pearls?

Like in the movie "Old Yeller", the pigs Jesus talks about are not some nice domesticated pot bellied pigs that people keep for pets. The pigs of Jesus day were the wild type, like those that attacked the boy and his dog in the movie. Pigs were known for trampling things, trampling people, and causing havoc, if they felt threatened. Pigs don't care about the value of anything–pearls or mud; corn or gold. It's all the same to them.

And that's the problem Jesus is addressing. The pigs are the people and situations in our life and in our society who don't value the things that God does–those are our pearls. Those pearls are things like forgiveness of sin, righteousness, the eternal consequences of sin, a relationship with God.

And we feed these pearls to pigs when we go beyond the scope of what God intended, with our message.

In other words, Jesus is saying that the people in your circle of influence and society in general are not made into godly people by legislating their good behavior. Society is not changed by demonstrations and picketing. Society is not changed by rallies and causes and boycotts and letter writing campaigns, or even through political parties.

Society is changed one person at a time. When a person hears about our pearls–or to put it another way,
...when that person hears that God loves them,
...God died for their sins,
...God forgives those sins, and
...God wants a relationship with him or her now,
...and a future for them with Him in heaven,
that's when things change!

Two years ago, the editorial writer Cal Thomas nailed this concept when he wrote this in his editorial...

The 1998 "off-year" campaign for control of Congress has started earlier than usual, is likely to be more expensive than ever and, in the end, will probably produce minimal change to the status quo of divided government.

As conservatives search desperately for a political savior who can undo the damage they perceive President Bill Clinton and his baby boom generation have caused to our morals, there are signs that things are changing. This change is fascinating because it is not coming from top-down political activism, but from a bottom-up transformation of minds and hearts as baby boomers come to their senses.

Boomers seem to be emerging from a protracted adolescence, spanning more than 30 years. News reports tell us they are tired of the values they once embraced and are searching for the faith, ethics, and virtues that mostly characterized their parent's and grandparents' generations. Just as boomers harmed culture with their largely bad behavior, their subtle switch is producing a beneficial jolt.

This shift is not only observable as many baby boomers search for the God who "died" in the ‘60's, it is also being noticed in the corporate world. A recent issue of Sales and Marketing Management began a cover story: "There's strange talk being spoken in the hallways of Corporate America today. It's about inner peace and a desire to gain more from business than a hefty paycheck...Spirituality, folks is taking hold of the workplace."

If this is right, conservatives may be focusing their efforts in the wrong place. Instead of concentrating on Washington, they might better achieve their objectives of turning to the harvest that waits them in the fields outside the Beltway. Meeting the boomers at their point of need is what the churches do best, or used to do best before too many became entangled with the wrong kingdom.

Then Cal concludes his editorial with a lesson about the pigs and our pearls. He writes the words on the front of your bulletin this morning..., "Once people's hearts are transformed, the political and cultural institutions will reflect that transformation. But it's nearly impossible to force a standard of goodness on a nation that either wants to be bad or is indifferent to those who do bad things."

III. Conclusion

Let me wrap this all up with a story.

Illustration: In the early days of the automobile a certain man's Model-T Ford stalled in the middle of the road. He couldn't get it started no matter how hard he cranked nor how much he tried to advance the spark or adjust things under the hood.

Just then a chauffeured limousine pulled up behind him, and a wiry, energetic old man stepped out from the back seat and offered to help.

After tinkering for a few moments the old man said, "Now try it!" Immediately the engine started. Then old man then identified himself as Henry Ford. "I designed and built these cars," he said, "so I know what to do when something goes wrong."

Friends, listen... God knows what to do when His world goes wrong. We don't have to figure out the solution. That's been given already. Afterall, he's the designer and builder of this world.
So, when the Coachella valley is steeped in sexual immorality, pride, paganism, secrecy, greed, perversion, family deterioration, self-centeredness, hate, prejudice, arguing and complaining... This is how He intends to fix it...

First, His insists that His followers stop "playing at religion", and get serious about their relationship with God–striving to make it as strong as possible.

Second, He wants those same followers to handle His valuable truth, His way. The truth is that... 1. God loves people so much that he gave His only Son, Jesus, as a sacrifice to pay for the consequences of any person's sin.
2. And anyone who believes that Jesus is the only way to forgiveness and eternal life will receive those things as a free gift from God, when they believe in Jesus.
And God's preferred way to handle that truth, is sharing it one person at a time!

Our instructions are short and to the point...
Matthew 7:6
6 "Do not give dogs what is sacred; do not throw your pearls to pigs.

We need to follow what God says, and stay out of the barnyard. Amen!