What Happened with Discernment?

Sermon Title: What Happened with Discernment?
Scripture: Matthew 7:6

What comes to mind when you hear the word discriminate or discrimination?

If you look for a definition of discrimination on the Internet, you will most likely find this: discrimination is the unfair or prejudicial treatment of individuals or groups based on characteristics like race, gender, age, religion, or disability.

If you look at the news or search for instances of discrimination, you will find many examples—racial discrimination, religious discrimination, among others. And it would seem that any type or form of discrimination is harmful.

That is, until you realize that discrimination can also mean the recognition and understanding of the difference between one thing and another.

Discrimination can mean distinguishing right from wrong, health from unhealth. As a matter of fact, you discriminate every day of your life. You decide how you’re going to spend your money. You can spend your money in many different ways, but you discriminate—you distinguish, you set forth a plan.

That plan might indicate that you are going to spend it on healthier, more organic food, and as you engage in this decision, you are discriminating against less organic and less healthy food.

When you go to the gas station, you have to discriminate between what type of gas you’re going to put in your car—low or high octane.

When you turn on the TV, you discriminate between watching the news or a show. When you turn on Netflix, you discriminate between watching a historical drama or a comedy. You are always discriminating—recognizing and understanding the difference between one thing and another—in order to make wise choices.

Your radio tuner discriminates. When you are setting the radio to a particular station, what the tuner is doing is engaging in electronic discrimination. It is saying it will receive the signal from this station, and this station only, and it will reject the signal from all other stations.

We live discriminating, and we exist in a world that is constantly discriminating.

And in our passage this morning, Jesus is telling us to discriminate.

The word discriminate is derived from a Latin word that means “to discern.”

Jesus is saying that we have to have the ability to distinguish.

So, we can say that Jesus is telling us that we must have discernment.

You’ll remember that we read from Leviticus 11:1–8 the instructions that God gave to Moses and Aaron, indicating the things God’s people were allowed to eat among all the animals that are on the earth. One of the reasons God was giving the people of Israel laws concerning what food they may and may not eat is so that they would develop the ability to distinguish, to discriminate, and to discern.

And that is what Jesus is telling His disciples. He has just told them that they should not be overly judgmental—what we called judgmentalism last week—this idea of being overly harsh in one’s judgment, disregarding one’s own frailty in judgment, and misunderstanding how judgmentalism can lead to hypocrisy.

Jesus has just warned His disciples against such evils. But on the flip side, Jesus knows that we must judge. We must discriminate. We must discern—and we must do it properly.

So, having guarded against an excessive, overly dogmatic—or we should say overly harsh—judgmentalism, Jesus now says: having understood the spirit in which you should judge, go forth judging, discriminating, and discerning justly.

So let us now turn to Matthew, chapter 7, verse 6, where Jesus tells us the main point of this sermon, which is: value the gospel deeply, but promote it wisely!

⁶ “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.

As we approach this passage, I want us to look at two ideas: first, the characterization; and second, the exhortation; and after, I will mention several words of application.

The first idea…

The Characterization: Jesus Is Using Cultural Imagery for the Church’s Discrimination

In verse 6, Jesus names four entities that must be properly distinguished. We will consider them in sets of two.

Dogs / Pigs

Both in the Old Testament and the New Testament, dogs are considered to be of a contemptuous character. In other words, dogs do not fare as they do in our current society.

Recently my dad spent several hundred dollars to house his dog when he came to visit.

You would not find a hospital for dogs—a veterinary clinic—in the time that Jesus was speaking to His disciples. Dogs were frowned upon. They were known to be scavenging, dirty animals that were unclean.

The same is true with pigs. Pigs were forbidden to be eaten by the Israelites. As we read earlier, the pig was not eaten because, although it parts the hoof, it does not chew the cud, and therefore it was unclean for God’s people. Furthermore, when Jesus expels demons, He sends them into a herd of pigs. So, both in the Old Testament and the New Testament, dogs and pigs are consistently portrayed as detestable.

But the question we must ask ourselves is this: what—or who—are they representing?

If Jesus is saying that one is not to give dogs what is holy or to cast one’s pearls before pigs, who are these dogs? Who are these pigs?

That seems to be a harsh word—a very startling word—given the fact that Jesus has just said that we should not be overly judgmental, that we should not be predisposed toward harshness and severity, that we should consider ourselves.

And now, Jesus is, in a sense, saying that we are to judge certain people to be dogs and pigs.

So what is Jesus getting at?
And who is He identifying as dogs and pigs?

What we can say at the outset is that these dogs and pigs are not Gentiles per se, because that would not make sense with the ending of Matthew, which calls us to go to the ends of the earth proclaiming the gospel.

But to begin to answer this question, we can look at Jesus’ own life and how He applied this principle.

First, He spoke to the Pharisees in parables because of the hardness of their hearts, so that although hearing, they would not be able to understand, and seeing, they still would not believe.

To the contrary, the Pharisees often opposed Jesus and were the main instigators of his death!

The psalmist prophetically speaks about this in Psalm 22:16, and says:

¹⁶ For dogs encompass me;

a company of evildoers encircles me;

they have pierced my hands and feet— ^[1]

Second, when Herod interrogated Jesus, we learn in the Gospel of Luke that He said nothing. In both of these instances, Jesus is not casting His pearls before swine, or what is holy before dogs.

The apostles carried out very similar actions in the book of Acts after the Jews continued to refute the message of Christ. We read in Acts 13:46:

“And Paul and Barnabas spoke out boldly, saying,
‘It was necessary that the word of God be spoken first to you.
Since you thrust it aside and judge yourselves unworthy of eternal life,
behold, we are turning to the Gentiles.’”

Furthermore, if we look at other New Testament passages where this idea of dogs and pigs is further described, we find two such instances—one from Paul and the other from Peter.

Paul identifies the legalists, those of the circumcision party, as dogs in Colossians 3.

Peter identifies false teachers as both dogs and pigs in 2 Peter 2.

So, as we consider this, we begin to get a clearer picture of who these dogs and pigs are:

• They are those who oppose the gospel vehemently
• They are those who distort the gospel deceptively

Let me say it again:

Dogs and pigs are a stand-in for those who both oppose the gospel vehemently and distort the gospel deceptively.

Now, we must bear in mind that dogs and pigs are revealed before they are realized. In other words, dogs and pigs show themselves to be such by how they respond to the gospel.

Having clarity on who the dogs and pigs are, it helps us understand what the holy things are and what the pearls are.

What Is Holy / Pearls?

• The holy things
• The pearls

Both are stand-ins for the gospel and its glorious benefits. The gospel describes holy realities, and it is worth the best efforts of our lives.

Now, that leads to the second idea presented to us in these verses…

The Exhortation: The Principle of Discernment

Jesus is setting forth the principle of our discernment—our discrimination.

He is saying: be judicious in how you present the gospel.

And we must be willing to discriminate—meaning to discern—against those who have revealed themselves to be:

• Ardently in opposition to the gospel
• Distorters of the gospel

This is not sinful judgmentalism.
This is righteous discernment.

That means there will be people—no matter how clearly, patiently, and honestly you present the gospel—who will still oppose you.

There will be others who will take the gospel and distort it to fit their own ends.

And Jesus is saying: we must not lack discernment.

To quote a commentator:

“We must bear in mind that some hear the gospel only to rebel. Disciples are not called on to keep offering it to those who continue to reject it with vicious contempt. Jesus taught all sorts of people generously, but before Herod He refused to say a word.”

But if the principle is that we must be judicious in how we present the gospel, that presupposes something deeper:

It presupposes that we ourselves are judicious—purposeful—in living into the realities of the gospel.

The gospel confronts us with our sin.
It exposes us.
It transforms us.

So if we are going to:

• Discriminate and discern who are the proper recipients of God’s Word
• Recognize rebellion and those who oppose the gospel
• Identify distortions of the gospel

Then we must first be discerning in this:

Are we ourselves living into the realities of the gospel?

Because you cannot rightly discern who are the dogs and the pigs if you do not first have proper discernment about your own life before God.

In other words:

The ability to discern others rightly is grounded in a life that is being shaped rightly by the gospel.

The former presupposes the latter.

The other aspect of this exhortation is what we find in the end of the verse…

If we give what is holy to dogs, and pearls to pigs, there will be consequences.

The end of verse 6 says:

“lest they trample them underfoot and turn to attack you.”

If we fail to discern, we are being warned that we may be attacked.

And how much has the church suffered from a lack of discernment?

We have tried, again and again, to explain and rationalize the gospel to those who have no interest in it—who are content without it, who do not care for it.

And in doing so, we have often exposed ourselves—and even cheapened the message to be more inclusive—because we refused to exercise the discernment that Jesus commands.

These two ideas lead to observe how can we apply this text to our lives…

The Application: Discernment in Our Witness

First Application: Gain Clarity and Esteem for the Gospel

We must be clear on the gospel and esteem it highly.

One of the unfortunate realities in the church today is a lack of clarity regarding the gospel.

Somehow, the church has reduced the gospel to a Jesus-only gospel, rather than a Jesus-centered gospel.

What do I mean by that?

When we recite the Apostles’ Creed, which is a summary of the gospel, there are three articles:

• One regarding the Father
• One regarding the Son
• One regarding the Holy Spirit

And yet, we often focus only on the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus—and even then, we sometimes fail to include His ascension.

But the first and third articles are crucial:

• The first tells us to whom we are accountable—God the Father
• The third tells us how we are empowered to live—by the Holy Spirit

Yet today, there seems to be:

• An overemphasis only on the middle article
• A lack of emphasis on what God calls us to do as His children
• A downplaying of human depravity

We have abandoned legalism, only to fall into the opposite ditch—libertarianism, a lax attitude toward God’s holy demands.

But both are wrong:

• Legalism sees law as bare command—law for law’s sake, detached from the love of the Father
• Libertarianism sees law as oppressive, restricting joy

But the gospel says something entirely different:

The gospel is the proclamation of God’s good news—that though we as God’s creation rebelled against him, he sought to bring us back into a relationship with him by freely loving us in his Son, Jesus Christ. Forgiving us or our sins and empowering us to live a life of obedience by his Spirit, while we await the establishment of the Kingdom of Heaven forever.

The gospel matters deeply. Why?

We must know what to cast.
We must know what we are promoting.
We must know what the holy things are.

If we do not, then:

• We will not engage properly in giving and casting
• We will not recognize when someone is responding rightly or wrongly
• We will not discern who is rejecting or distorting the gospel

Because if the gospel is unclear to us, then we will not have a standard—a benchmark—for discernment.

How can someone rebel against or distort the gospel if we ourselves do not clearly know it?

Therefore:

The gospel must be clear, and we must value it deeply.

Second: Make sure you are being shaped by the gospel!

The second application we must consider is this: we are all capable of being dogs and pigs, that is opposes to and distorters of the gospel. That is why Jesus warns against the presumption of piety in the previous verses. Therefore, we must be continually shaped by the gospel!

We are all capable of having hard hearts toward God—of opposing the gospel and even falsifying the gospel.

Even this past week, we have both been legalistic and have distorted the gospel. We have opposed God in His overtures toward us. We have been too harsh on our shortcomings and too lax with our sins.

Therefore, judging someone to be a dog or a pig according to God’s Word must be slow and careful. We must remember that even Paul initially opposed the gospel, and yet became one of the greatest apostles in the history of the church.

How do I make sure I am being shaped by the gospel?

First: Don’t water down the gospel!

Why do we soften the gospel message so that it is more appealing?

Oftentimes we’re tempted to soften the gospel because we scared that people won’t respond positively to it. But Jesus is telling us here that we should not soften the gospel, because to some, the gospel is a fragrance of life, and to others, it is the stench of death.

We should let the gospel do its work to reveal those who belonged to God and those who don’t.

Second: Be growing in grace!

If we are capable of being dogs and pigs, how do we avoid becoming dogs and pigs?

By growing in grace—refusing to remain on the bottle.

I remember when I was young, my mom took me to a place where they showed pictures of children who stayed on the bottle too long, and how their teeth were ravaged because of it. I left that place with a desire not to have my teeth look like those children.

But the question is: as Christians, are we going on to deeper spiritual truths—further implications of the gospel?

It’s not that we graduate from the gospel—we never will. But we must grow into the deeper realities of the gospel.

This was the concern of the writer of Hebrews. He says that by that time, these Christians should have been able to eat solid food, but they were still on milk. Why? Because their discernment was not fully developed. They were refusing to engage with the deep truths of the gospel.

As Richard Phillips says, ““The recipients of this letter were like many Christians today who think that theology is a waste of time. What difference does it make, people ask, whether God is a Trinity or not, whether Christ’s righteousness comes by imputation or infusion, and whether regeneration comes before faith or after? What is important, they say, is that we get along with each other. Then they cite passages commending a childlike faith, as if that were the same thing as a childish faith, that is, one that is indifferent to or ignorant of the Word of God.

And oftentimes, there is an apathy—an indifference—toward theological and doctrinal development. But that will always lead to the demise of the church: the demise of its health and the demise of its future.

If we relinquish or set aside the responsibility to develop theologically, we will also lose our capacity for discernment.

Third Application: Be Promoting the Gospel

There is an assumption in this text that the disciples are giving and casting.

Jesus assumes that His disciples will be discipling. He assumes that the citizens of His Kingdom will be promoting that Kingdom to others. This warning is given in the context of actively proclaiming the gospel.

So the real question is:

Are you casting? Are you promoting the gospel?

Because the warning is for those who are engaged in that activity—those who are in danger of casting their pearls and giving what is holy to those who are unsuitable.

But the underlying assumption is that this activity is actually happening among the citizens of the Kingdom of heaven.

Fourth Application: Discernment in Our Presentation

We must be discerning in how we present the gospel.

• Do we discern the people we are speaking to?
  • Jesus engaged with Pilate, but did not say a word to Herod. Paul walked away from the Jews.
• Are we willing to walk away when necessary?

Main point: value the gospel deeply, but promote it wisely!

Conclusion

As we go forth as Kingdom Citizens, let us be discerning both about the gospels power in our lives, let’s focus on the value of the gospel for us, and its priority in all that we do, be judicious in how we present it to others. Let us not be found casting pearls before pigs, or giving to the dogs what is holy!

^[1] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2025), Ps 22:16.