We can all cast pearls and we can all be pigs

Matt 7:4-7 “How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when there is the 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, and do not throw your pearls before pigs, lest they trample them underfoot and turn to attack you. “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.”
Matt. 7:12 So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.

To understand the pearls and the pigs, we need to understand the order of the scriptures, and the flow of our Messiah’s wisdom. He is dealing with the flesh and its willingness to judge and slay others, to justify and make place for itself.

• Firstly Jesus bans all forms of judgmentalism for Christians, except looking for the gospel to judge us (“the log in my eye”). Let me say, ALL squabbles, envies and jealousies in the church and in leadership forums stem from a disobedience to these words.

• Second, Jesus speaks of the fact that you waste your wisdom on men who refuse to deal with their own logs. They will nit-pick my revelation, savage it, or dismiss it because of the shortcomings they look for in me (these are the dogs and the pigs).

• And then thirdly, Jesus reminds us that our first port of call should be with the Father, not before men (ask…seek…knock). God can help you remove the mote from your eye and ignore the beam in another’s. God loves your pearls and wants to give you more. God can give you discretion and power in life, so you can enter eternity “in glory”!
  

Without God active in my life through His Spirit, I notice specks and I can bark like a dog and snuffle like a pig. Excuse the crudeness. 

Pigs are those who notice specks but ignore pearls. I am a pig when I:

• Keep score against my brother

• Always want to have the wiser word and the final say

• Struggle to say “well done” with enthusiasm

• Cast a jealous eye over others who have what I do not have, who are promoted to profile that I do not enjoy

• Advise others to do things I am not doing, or aiming at doing with sincerity

• Neutralize another’s revelation with my own experience and formulas (“drawn from my perfect past”, said he sarcastically)

• Am not honest about my own weaknesses and sins

• Preach without vulnerability towards myself

• Always pray, “Lord help THEM, change THEM, let THEM become holy” (instead of holy Daniel’s prayer, “OUR sins and iniquities have made Jerusalem an object of scorn...”)

• Use my humor to put down another, outmaneuver my colleague, trump an argument

• Use my anger to crush another

• Or anything else whereby I use adamic powers to elevate myself at others’ expense.
  

How opposite this is to humble Jesus, dying so others may live! How strange the scripture, “esteem others higher”, must seem to a swine.

And we have all had our porcine moments.

I smell bacon frying.

I cast pearls when I:

• Share my special thoughts with a pig

• Try to win an argument with my pearls (this is not what pearls are for, and “the Lord’s servant must not argue”)

• Rush from my bedroom to the public address system (shouting what the Lover has whispered in my ear. Not all whispers are for the public domain. That is like putting up a camera in the master bedroom)

• Want to impress my friends and my leaders. That is the oyster opening up way too early, to show the first glimmer of the pearl

• Am zealous in a religious system (pig farm). When Jesus encountered the religious system, He generally did not answer questions, and spoke in parables too
  

Remember that a pearl is only a pearl when it is in our heart and our lifestyle, not just in our head and on our tongue. So enjoy Jesus in secret. That is the secret power of Future Church. Men and women happy with a private love affair. Producing offspring 9 months later, as it were.

In this instant pie, TV dinner age, methinks far too many pearls are being cast in many directions. And not all that is cast are real pearls – millions are fakes, junk revelation. And many also are mere cultured pearls, cultivated in the farms of famous ministries, populated by fans and acolytes content with finding knowledge and repeating it, rather than finding Jesus and being ravished by Him.

Death to the pig within! Life to the oyster within!

Nick