39 Why Everything You've Been Taught About Throwing Pearls to Pigs Might Be Wrong (Matthew 7:6)

Krisan Marotta: Welcome to Wednesday in the Word. I'm Krisan Marotta, and this is my podcast about what the Bible means and how we know. Today is the 39th talk in my series on the Gospel of Matthew. Today we'll be studying Matthew chapter 7, verse 6. The lecture notes for today's talk are on the link below this podcast. You can also find them by going directly to wednesdayintheword.com slash Matthew 3.9. And on the website, you can find all previous episodes in this series. Thanks so much for joining me today. We're nearing the end of the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 7 today, and we're about to finish the third major section of the sermon, and we will look at his conclusion next week. Let me just review the context. The entire Sermon on the Mount, as I understand it, has been about one topic: who will be accepted by God? That is, who will be saved, who will find life in his kingdom. In the first section, the Beatitudes, Jesus described those who are blessed or fortunate, who will receive the reward of a place in the kingdom of heaven. The Beatitudes tell us the qualities of saving faith that a person must have to inherit a place in the kingdom of God. In the next section, the antithesis, Jesus warned that you have to seek God in a different way than the Pharisees claimed to seek him if you want to enter the kingdom of heaven, and he gave several examples to explain what he meant by that. In the third section, the one we're about to finish, which is also the largest section, Jesus challenges those who are too concerned with the things of this world. In the very last section previous to this, Jesus warned us not to condemn others, lest we also be condemned by God, and we talked about how one of the fundamental truths of the gospel is that God is the center of the universe and we his creatures are of equal importance. There is no standard by which I can condemn someone else that does not also condemn me. Now he continues in Matthew seven, six. 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. This verse is really hard to fit into the outline of the sermon. It seems to come out of the blue. Some people see it as a standalone verse, some read it as going with the previous section, some with the next section, and at first reading it doesn't really seem to fit with either one of them. I think it does fit in the context. I think this is the transition, pivotal verse that pivots him into his conclusion, and you'll see why I think that in a minute. Regardless of how you fit this verse into the context, most people interpret the verse the same way, and it is something like this. The holy things and the pearls represent the things of God. Some people think that's general truth about God, others say no, it's the gospel itself. But anyway, they most everyone agrees it is things of God, general truth or specifically the gospel. The dogs and the pigs represent people who are opposed to the gospel and who reject God, and therefore Jesus is saying something like, Do not preach the things of God to hostile, unworthy people. And that is a very, very common way of understanding this verse. However, it's not the way I understand it. It is the way I used to understand it, but I have come to what I think is a better interpretation. My problem with the common view is that this verse follows on the heels of Jesus telling us not to condemn others. And many people will acknowledge this apparent contradiction. For example, I searched the internet to find what people were saying about this verse, and one writer said this quote, in the previous context, Jesus told us not to judge, but on the other hand, there are times when Christians are to use good judgment, particularly since they have a mandate to preach the gospel and make disciples. Times come, however, when the audience to our witnessing to the truth of Christ Jesus will confront us with hostility, hatred, and even occasionally violence. In situations such as those, Jesus does not expect us to continue being his witnesses to such hostile audiences. Almost everyone understands the verse that way. I used to understand it that way. As I said, I've changed my mind. I only found a couple of other people who take the verse the way I understand it. Perhaps the common view has stayed so common because it is just too hard to swim against the tide. I do find it interesting that even many of those who advocate for the common view seemed kind of uneasy or apologetic about it. Even as they explained to the common view, they pointed out the problems with it, and how exactly do we live this out? And they seem to conclude, well, we don't really have a better option to suggest. Well, I'm going to give you what I think is a better option, but you must understand that it is a very minority viewpoint. As always, you should do your own study and evaluate all the options. This is just my good for nothing, worthless opinion. I am no one from nowhere. I have no credentials, I'm not ordained by any group. I am just one Bible student telling other Bible students, here's what I've learned in my studies. Several years ago, one of the pastors that I follow preached a different understanding of this verse. He offered the view I'm about to give you. I don't know if he originated the view or if he read it from someone else. As I said, there are a few other people I've found who are very close to this view. He didn't give a source, so maybe he's the one who figured it out. But the more I've wrestled with Matthew in this sermon, the more I have come to believe that his view makes way better sense than the traditional and common understanding. So I'll just ask you to keep an open mind and think it through for yourself. The little minority I'm in may be wrong, but I don't think so. At least not right now. First, let me explain the problems with the common understanding. And many of those who teach the common understanding acknowledge these problems. I'm not telling you anything you can't find in the commentaries. These issues are written about and widely acknowledged. Just to remind you, the common view is that Jesus is saying something like, do not preach the gospel to hostile, unworthy people. My first problem with this view is that it takes this verse more or less as an allegory. An allegory is a symbolic kind of statement that needs to be decoded. So this interpretation, the common interpretation, begins by asking what do the pearls represent? What do the holy things represent? Who are the dogs? Who are the pigs? Who do they represent? And then they make substitutions. The dogs and the pigs represent people who are hostile to the gospel, the pearls and the holy things represent the gospel message. So you have a statement, don't give what is holy to the dogs, becomes don't preach the gospel to hostile, unworthy people. And that is how we handle allegories. The hallmark of an allegory is the story itself makes no sense. The elements in the story are chosen for their symbolic value and not their value to the story. In an allegory, we don't care if a rocking chair sprouts wings and flies away because that's not the point. The point is the symbolic value of the rocking chair. It doesn't have to make sense as a story. Also, the symbols have to be widely known for an allegory to work. For instance, we in America could talk about elephants and donkeys in a political allegory because they are widely known political symbols. We could talk about an eagle in a patriotic allegory because that's a widely known symbol of America. So here's an example allegory. A man was trying to look over a wall in order to see a light on the horizon. First he stood on the back of a rabbit, but he could not see the light. Then he stood on the back of a snail, and he could see the light perfectly. Now I'm counting on you to know that light is a metaphor for understanding, that a rabbit is something fast and a snail is something slow. No one actually stands on the back of a rabbit, no one stands on the back of a snail. The story itself makes no sense, but if you understand the symbols, you can quickly figure out my meaning. It takes time to reach understanding, you have to go slow. If you don't know my symbols, then you're gonna have no clue what I'm talking about. So if this verse is an allegory, we would expect dogs and pigs to be widely known cultural symbols of the day the way, say elephants, eagles, and donkeys are in America. But they weren't. At least we have no evidence that they had any symbolic value in the day. Without that cultural understanding of the symbols, Jesus could have no expectation that his audience would understand it. So as good Bible students, I think we at least ought to raise the question, how likely is it that Jesus is speaking an allegory here? If you've listened to my series on parables, you know that I think parables and allegories are distinct interpretive creatures. They need to be studied and approached differently. And Jesus uses allegory very, very rarely. He teaches in parables way more often. He teaches in metaphor even more often. Now that doesn't mean he can't use an allegory when he wants to, he certainly can, and I think there's at least one instance where he does. But given the way he typically teaches, my first reaction would be to understand this as a parable and not an allegory. With parables, we don't make one-to-one substitutions. For example, in the parable of the lost sons, we don't ask what do the pigs represent or what do the pods that the pigs eat represent. That's the wrong way to approach a parable. Instead, we look at the overall point of the story and how that point corresponds to reality. Parables are analogies between normal everyday life and some other reality. Parables as a story make sense. They reflect reality in a real and coherent way. In fact, the parable counts on the listener understanding the story to make the comparison. And usually the comparison is something like this, the kingdom of God is like, and then we have a story, or your heavenly father is like, but much more so, or an eternal abiding truth is analogous to the story. So there's a reality that we know and are familiar with. Consider the parable of the sower and the seed again. There is nothing unusual about the story of the sower and the seed. It is a normal description about ordinary agriculture of the day. A sower goes out to his field to sow the seed, the seed falls on different kinds of soils, and the different soils produce different results. That is what we expect to happen in reality. Jesus is making a comparison or an analogy between the growth of the seed in different types of soils and the different responses people have to the gospel. How people respond to the gospel is like how the seed responds to the different soils. The parable makes sense as a story and counts on you being familiar with the reality of the story in order to understand the comparison. So I think it's worth asking, could this verse be a parable? Let me read it again. 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. I think this verse makes sense as a story. In fact, I think we could recast it as a traditional parable. Something like this. Another man tossed his pearls to the swine. The pigs trampled the pearls into the mud and attacked the man looking for food. Well, that's a story that makes sense. In fact, when you read it that way, it provokes the immediate reaction. Why would anyone do that? And that's what a good parable does. We identify with the story and it provokes thought. Why would you give your best steak to the dogs? Why would you throw your valuable pearls to the pigs to play with? Now we would need some context to understand exactly what point Jesus is making, and often Jesus does give us contextual clues. He says something like, The kingdom of heaven is like, or he told them a parable to pray and not lose heart. And I think we do have some clues in the context, which I'm going to get to in a minute. So my first problem is this verse does not appear to be an allegory. It does appear to be a parable, and therefore we should interpret it as a parable, not an allegory. Second, my second big problem with the common understanding is that it's very hard to fit the common understanding of this verse into the context of the Sermon on the Mount. If Jesus really is making a statement about not preaching the gospel to hostile people, how does that fit with anything he said so far? I've been arguing that this sermon describes those who will be saved. Essentially, I think his thesis statement is let me tell you who will find eternal life. Who's going to find eternal life in the kingdom of heaven? These people. And he approaches that question in a variety of ways and from different angles. What does avoiding preaching to those hostile to the gospel have to do with that theme? And as many have pointed out, who isn't hostile to the gospel? We all start out hostile to the gospel. We all start out rejecting the gospel. It's only by the grace of God that any of us stop and reconsider. How do we know how much hostility is too much? Where do you draw the line? Now some might respond to this objection of the about the context by saying, Well, Matthew just collected a lot of Jesus' teaching and he put it in one place. It doesn't have to fit the rest of the sermon because Matthew was just collecting random sayings of Jesus and he just threw this in here because there wasn't a better place. Well, I would respond to that by saying, I trust Matthew's understanding. I think he collected and organized his material in a way that accurately reflects both what Jesus said and what Jesus meant. Now Luke places the Lord's Prayer in a different context in his gospel than Matthew does. Is that a problem? I don't think so. I expect Jesus taught that prayer multiple times in multiple settings in different towns as he traveled. And I trust that both Matthew and Luke accurately understood the prayer and included it in their gospels in contexts where it made sense and accurately reflected what Jesus was teaching. I think Matthew has intentionally crafted his material to make the points he wants to make, and I trust his understanding that these things belong together. Either Jesus said these verses back to back the way they are written, or Matthew collected them and put them together because he thought they fit together in context. So either way, I assume they belong together. I expect that if Matthew put this verse here, it relates to the theme and the context in some way. And if Jesus spoke it here, then he definitely intended it to be in this context. So there is some kind of connection. We just need to think it through. You'll recall that through this series on Matthew, we have spent quite a bit of time looking at the Old Testament. Jesus was a Jew. In this sermon, he is speaking to a largely Jewish audience that he expects to be familiar with the Old Testament. Matthew was also a Jew and he was writing this gospel to a largely Jewish audience. Matthew expects his readers to be familiar with the Old Testament, and as we've seen throughout this gospel, he doesn't explain the Old Testament when he quotes it. He expects his readers to know the Old Testament, not just the words of the verse, but what the verse means, where it appears, what story it's in, and why it's significant. So when we come to a verse like this, in Matthew in particular, it seems to me that we ought to ask, do we find this concept, this theme, or this teaching anywhere in the Old Testament? And in fact, we do. We have a tiny bit of Old Testament background that I think sheds light on this verse. It's in Exodus twenty two. Moses is giving the law to Israel, and many of those laws relate to keeping religiously holy. The children of Israel are to eat a certain way, they are to dress in a certain way, they wash their hands in a certain way, they handle their food in a certain way. And it's not that eating or dressing or washing are in and of themselves moral choices. It's not evil to wash your hands in a different way, it's not immoral to eat another way. Rather, God has asked them to symbolically represent through the way they eat or dress or wash certain truths, they're representing certain truths about their relationship with Him. So these practices are an outward ritualistic expression of an inner commitment to holiness and righteousness. And one of those laws is in Exodus 22, 31. It reads, You shall be consecrated to me, therefore you shall not eat any flesh that is torn by beasts in the field, you shall throw it to the dogs. Now here's the situation behind this verse. People need food to live. Meat is a great source of protein and nourishment. It helps keep us alive. We humans have to work hard to get the food we need. In order to get meat, we have to raise animals or we have to go hunting. It takes time and effort and a lot of preparation. In such an agricultural economy, roadkill, for lack of a better term, seems like a real find. Here is meat on the ground. I didn't have to raise it, I didn't have to hunt it. There it is, just like a gift on the ground. God puts a religious restriction on this situation. Now, perhaps God gave the restriction because roadkill is unsavory, it was killed violently by another animal, who knows how long it's been lying there, or if it was healthy when it met its match. There's something unsavory about it. But if you have nothing to eat the next day and your children might go hungry, you could overlook these aspects because, hey, it's meat and it's there and it's free. Now for his own purposes and plans, God wants their eating habits to be a picture of their commitment to holiness. God knows they need food, but in this case, he wants them to abstain from taking this easy meat on the ground. He wants them to reflect their commitment to holiness by refusing to eat the roadkill. So Exodus says, Don't take this kind of meat for yourself, instead throw it to the dogs. And I think we're probably talking about wild dogs here, not pets. So to throw meat to the dogs is a way of saying, get rid of it. This meat is not for you. There is plenty of other meat that is clean and a holy person can eat it. You can eat the animals that you raise for that purpose, you can eat the animals that you hunt as long as they're clean animals that are not forbidden by the law. That kind of meat is holy. A person striving toward holiness can eat that kind of meat without guilt. God has provided that kind of food for you and you can gratefully eat it. But roadkill is not for a person striving to be holy. It is unclean. Trust that God will provide for you and throw this kind of meat to the wild dogs. Okay, so let's take that back to what Jesus said. Let me read Matthew 7 6 again. 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. Well, I think Exodus 22 is the key to understanding this verse. What do you do with unholy, unclean meat? You throw it to the dogs. To throw meat to the dogs is to say, this meat is unholy, this meat is not clean, this meat is roadkill. Why would you throw it to the dogs? Because it's unholy. It's not for me. It's not for the person striving to follow God. Eating that kind of meat is forbidden by the law. But what kind of foolish person takes holy meat that is clean and given to you as a gift from God and throws it to the dogs? Clean and holy meat is a gift of God intended to sustain your life. If you throw it to the dogs, it shows that you don't understand and value it as you should. Just think how perverse it is to take what is holy and throw it to wild animals. You're taking something valuable, something beautiful, something holy that God has given to you, and you're treating it as if it were worthless, common, and profane. If I'm right here, the emphasis of this verse is not who are the dogs and who are the pigs. The emphasis is on the thrower. It's on the fool who treats something holy as if it were worthless. So I would argue that Jesus is not saying figure out who the hostile, unworthy people are and don't bother sharing the gospel with them. Instead, he's saying don't take what is holy and precious and treat it as if it were worthless. Likewise, I think that's the significance of throwing pearls to swine. Pearls are beautiful and valuable. Pearls make you wealthy. If you wanted to travel to the temple to make an offering, you had to make your offering portable. And pearls and coins were a way to do that. That's why there were money changers in the temple. You would convert your offering to something easy to carry, like pearls or coins, and when you got to the temple, you would exchange your pearls or your money for the animal offering you wanted to make. It was much easier to travel with a pouch of pearls than to travel with a live animal. Pearls are a way to make wealth portable. They are meant to bring wealth and adornment to your life. What kind of foolish person throws pearls to the pigs? To do that is to say these pearls aren't valuable enough to keep. Maybe these unclean pigs can play with them. He's not saying figure out which people are like pigs and don't cast your pearls of wisdom before them. He's saying don't be the kind of fool who throws away what is beautiful and precious. Now we've got one more phrase to deal with, this last phrase, lest they trample them underfoot and turn to attack you. There are a couple of options here revolving around who is doing the trampling and who is doing the attacking. I'll give you the options and in the end I'm not sure it makes a whole lot of difference to the interpretation. A straightforward way to read this is lest the pigs trample the pearls underfoot and then those same pigs turn and tear you to pieces. But another possibility that some have suggested is to see this first as an A B B A pattern. So the pattern would be dogs, pigs, pigs, dogs. And then you would read it, do not give what is holy to the dogs, and do not throw your pearls before pigs, lest pigs trample the pearls on your foot, and dogs turn and tear you to pieces. It's hard to be definitive on this point. Some commentators said, well, obviously the pigs are domesticated, they aren't going to attack you, so it has to be A B B A and the dogs are wild, they're going to attack you. Others said, no, no, these kind of pigs, if they get mad, they can really harm you, and there's a lot of debate about who's doing what. I don't really know enough to say for sure, but as I said, I don't think it really makes much interpretive difference. Either way, the general picture is the same, and it is something like this. The fool throws away something holy and precious. Perhaps he thought there would be some mundane benefit. Maybe he thought it would keep the dogs away from his farm animals because they have their stomachs full of meat. Maybe it will keep the pigs happy so they won't tear down the fence. But instead it backfires, he loses the valuable meat and the valuable pearls, and it turns out worse for him in the end. The pigs destroy the pearls, and either the dogs or the pigs attack him anyway. Okay, so let's put this in the context. Jesus is nearing the end of this sermon. He's about to wrap it up. He's been telling us who it is that is going to inherit eternal life in his kingdom. What could be more valuable than that? Our eternal destiny hangs in the balance. Our eternal destiny hinges on how we answer that question. Jesus has given us something truly valuable. The Messiah, the Son of God, God's representative on earth, has just explained to us how to find eternal life in his kingdom. That's as good as God Himself answering the question. This is the professor giving us the answers to the questions on the final exam. This is the key information we need to find eternal life in the kingdom of heaven. And he's saying, don't treat this information as if it were something common or of little value. The question is not who are the pigs and who are the dogs. The question is not figuring out if these people over there somewhere are worthy. The issue is you and me, listeners, we just heard this sermon. We have been given a truly valuable gift. And the question now is, will we recognize the value of that gift or not? What are we going to cling to? What are we going to throw away? What are we going to value and think is worth keeping? Are we going to embrace the pearls we've just been given or are we going to throw them to the pigs? Jesus is saying, cling to what is precious. As he said earlier in the sermon, store up your treasure in heaven and not on earth. If you're going to throw something to the dogs, throw the unholy things away, the things that are not for you. Keep the things that are gifts of God. Now remember, he's been contrasting genuine believers and hypocrites throughout this section of the sermon, and I think the scribes and the Pharisees are the hypocrites he has in mind. Believers long for eternal life in the kingdom of God. Believers endure rejection and persecution to gain that life. They cling to their faith and hope in God's promises through trials and hard circumstances. Believers seek the true treasure, the treasures which are in heaven. On the other hand, hypocrites use their religion to gain the approval of others and to promote their own worldly gain. They pray and fast and give alms in order to gain the praise of others. They use the law as a means to self righteousness and as a means of convincing themselves and others that they are good and pious people. They seek religion as a way of making their lives better now in this world and have lost sight of the promises of God. They're seeking worldly treasure. They've lost sight of what's truly valuable. That's the kind of thing Jesus is talking about in the verse, and I think it explains how this fits into the context. Cling to what is holy and precious. Hold fast to the things of God, value his promises, his commandments above all else. Seek life in his kingdom and not the pleasures of this world. Don't be like the Pharisees, who've essentially wasted the gift they've been given. They have the incredible gift of the Old Testament scriptures, but they devalue the things of God by using them for worthless and worldly pursuits. That's like throwing meat that is holy to the dogs. Instead, you want to keep it, you want to be nourished by it. It's a gift of God for you. Likewise, don't throw your pearls to the pigs. Instead, cling to those things that are valuable and beautiful, the things of God. They are your treasure. Don't waste them, don't throw them away. If you don't keep and treasure the things of God, if you throw them away, it's not going to turn out well for you in the end. Well, I think that understanding fits very well into the theme of the sermon, and it makes a good transition between closing section three and his conclusion. I've told you this whole time throughout this sermon how to find eternal life. Listen, embrace it, open your eyes and hear, don't throw it away. Now let me see if I can summarize this. This whole sermon has been about answering the question who will be accepted by God? One way to summarize what we've learned so far is this. Everyone on the planet faces three main questions in life. And these are the soul searching, crucial questions on which our destiny depends. Number one, how do we stand with God? Number two, what do we need to do about it? And number three, what do we want? If I understand the teaching of Scripture and this sermon correctly, the true children of God answer these questions in a certain way. And by children of God I mean those who will inherit life in the kingdom of heaven, people who are saved, believers. So first, how do we stand with God? For the child of God, there is only one answer to this question. Apart from God's mercy and the blood of Jesus Christ, we stand condemned before God. We are evil and rebellious people. We have not loved God or our neighbors as we should. What we really need is for God to have mercy on us and to forgive us, and the only way to stand before a holy God and be accepted is for God to be merciful to us. Second, what is it that we need to do about it? Well, the true child of God gives one answer repent. That is, we humbly admit that we are sinners and we are in the wrong. We embrace and accept that God's way is right and good, and that we have rebelled and gone our own way instead. We confess that we are not what we should be, and we cry out to God to change us so that we can live faithfully following Him. Repentance is not just saying, I'm sorry. Repentance is a 180 about face turn. We were headed one way away from God, we stop, we make a 180 turn, and we run toward Him instead. Now we will not always be successful in our efforts to faithfully follow Him, but we admit that we have gone astray and we strive to return to the right path. Third question, what do we want? Well the true child of God answers that one way. We want life from God. We want God to free us from our sin and make us holy. Only our creator can solve the problem of sin, death, corruption, and futility and all the muck and evil that's inside us. Only our creator can solve the problem of our sinful, fallen, broken world. Nothing in this life is more valuable than obtaining life in the kingdom of God when He makes us holy and the world holy. The true children of God answer these questions with their eyes on God, trusting Him. We are totally dependent on the mercy of God and the blood of Jesus Christ. We admit that we're in the wrong and we turn back to Him. We grieve and despair over our sinfulness and we long to be made holy. We long for the kind of life promised in the coming kingdom of God. Fundamentally, each and every human being has to come to terms with God about these three questions. People can have the right theological answers to a whole host of questions and still not get these three right. So we can rightly believe that God exists, we can rightly believe that everyone should strive to love our neighbors as ourselves, we could even believe that Jesus is the Messiah. We can correctly believe a whole lot of theological truths and still answer these questions the wrong way. Another way of saying this is we can have proper theology but lack saving faith. Conversely, we can hold a lot of theological truths that are wrong, but if we get these three questions right, we can be saved. So we can be confused and mixed up about the finer points of systematic theology and still have saving faith. Another way of talking about this is what I've taught before is the four core convictions of saving faith. These convictions are basically the answers to the three questions I just posed. Conviction one, I know that I am sinful and I am not capable of making myself holy or righteous. Conviction two, I know that I am dependent on God's mercy. He owes me nothing. I have done nothing that requires him to save me. Conviction three, I long to be made holy, and what I most want from God is forgiveness for my sins and freedom from them. And then conviction four, I trust that God will forgive me and make me holy because of the blood of Jesus Christ. Now in this sermon, Jesus has been contrasting the right answers to these questions with the wrong answers. For example, Jesus has frequently pointed at the self-righteous Pharisees. One way to think about self-righteousness is it that it gives the wrong answers to the first two questions. How do we stand before God? Well, the self-righteous person thinks, well, in comparison to other people, I'm doing pretty well. The self-righteous person thinks I'm better off than most people, and you know, God basically approves of me. Question two, what do we need to do? Well, the self-righteous person thinks they just need to keep doing what they're doing. They will continue to bask in the approval of God. Jesus has also pointed a lot of this sermon at the worldly hypocrites. The hypocrites claim to see God, but in reality they are more concerned with the things of the world. And these people, the hypocrites, give the wrong answer to the third question. What do we want? Well, the hypocrites want a smooth, easy, and prosperous life now. They want the best of what this world has to offer more than anything else. These kind of religious hypocrites would say, Well, of course I want to follow God and all, but let's not let following God get in the way of financial security or my love life or having the respect of my peers or something like that. Following God shouldn't cost me opportunities for pleasure or satisfaction or get in the way of me acquiring the things that I truly want or need. You can be a very sincere and religious person, but answer these three questions the wrong way, and if you do, that's a big red flag that you lack saving faith. This is the message of the Sermon on the Mount. In the Beatitudes, Jesus describes the hearts and minds of those who truly follow God, the truly fortunate people who sincerely answer these three questions in the right way because they have saving faith. In the antithesis, Jesus focused his attention on the Pharisees, a religious group who answered these three questions the wrong way. They were serious students of Scripture, they studied the law, and as a group, Jesus charged them with having fallen into self-righteousness. And Jesus says, your righteousness has to exceed that of these self-righteous Pharisees. They think they're blameless under the law when they need to understand that they are sinners. And then in the third section, Jesus focused on the hypocrites who are worldly. He describes how they practice their religion. They're looking for the rewards of this world. They say they're seeking God, but they really want the approval of their peers, and that's the reward they're going to get. However, religious they are in practice, at heart, the rewards they are seeking are not life in the kingdom of God, they're the pleasures and treasures of this world. So, in this sermon that Jesus is about to conclude, he has given us something incredibly valuable. One day we will stand before the judgment seat of God, and our destiny will hinge on how we answer three basic questions now. One, how do we stand with God? And the right answer is apart from God's mercy and the blood of Jesus Christ, we stand condemned before God. Two, what is it that we need to do? We need to repent. That is, we humbly admit that we are sinners and we are in the wrong. We embrace and accept that God's way is right and good and we have rebelled and got our own way instead. And what do we want? What we want most is for God to free us from our sin, forgive us, and make us holy. We trust Him to forgive us and free us from our sin because of the blood of Jesus Christ and His profound and gracious mercy. That knowledge is a pearl of great price, and we don't want to throw it out with the trash. Thank you for listening to Wednesday in the Word, the podcast that explains not only what a passage means, but also shows you how to figure it out. You can hear all previous episodes in this series on my website, wednesdayintheword.com. There is no charge, no spam, no ads, and no requests for donations. It's all free for you to improve your study skills and understanding of scripture. I do have one request. If you've been blessed by this podcast, please subscribe to the podcast, leave a positive rating or review wherever you listen, and most importantly, tell a friend what you learned and where you learned it. Thank you to Reggie Coates for the use of his beautiful song Tenacious. You can listen to more of Reggie's music at heartfeltmusic.org. Check out his other CDs, you'll be glad you did. Thank you for joining me today. I'm Krisan Marotta, and I'll see you next week at Wednesday in the Word.