CHRISTIAN CONSIDERATENESS - Oswald Chambers
” Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you.” Jesus is inculcating the need to examine carefully what you present in the way of God s truth to others. If you present the pearls of God s revelation to unspiritual people, He says they will trample the pearls under foot does not trample you under their feet, that would not matter so much, but they will trample the truth of God under their feet. These words are not human words, but the words of Jesus, and the Holy Spirit alone can teach us what they mean. There are some truths that God will not make simple. The only thing God makes plain in the Bible is the way of salvation and sanctification, after that my understanding depends entirely on my walking in the light. Over and over again men water down the word of God to suit those who are not spiritual, and consequently the word of God is trampled under the feet of ” swine.” Ask yourself in what way am I flinging God s truth to unspiritual swine? Be careful Jesus says, how you give God s holy things to ” dogs,” i.e., a symbol of the folks on the outside; don t cast your holy things before them nor give the pearls of God s truth to men who are swine. Paul mentions the possibility of the pearl of sanctification being dragged in the mire of fornication, it comes through not respecting this mighty caution of Our Lord’s. Some points in your experience you have no right to talk about. There are times of fellowship between Christians when these pearls of precious rarity get turned over and looked at, but if you flaunt them for the means of converting people without the permission of God, you will find what Jesus says is true, they will trample them under their feet.
Our Lord never tells us to confess anything but Himself. He that confesseth ME before men.” Testimonies to the world on the subjective line are always wrong, they are for saints, for those who are spiritual and understand; but your testimony to the world is Our Lord Himself, confess Him He saved me, He sanctified me, He put me right with God. It is always easier to be true to your experience than to Jesus Christ. Many a man spurns Jesus Christ in any other phase than that of his particular religious ideas. The central truth is not salvation nor sanctification nor the second coming; the central truth is nothing less than Jesus Christ. I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto Me.” Error always comes in when we take something Jesus Christ does and preach it as the truth. It is part of the truth, but if you take it to be the whole truth you become an advocate of an idea instead of a Person, the Lord Himself. The characteristic of an idea is that it has the ban of finality. If you are only true to a doctrine of Christianity instead of to Jesus Christ, you drive home your idea with sledgehammer blows, and the people who listen to you say Well, that may be true, but they resent the way it is presented. When you follow Jesus, the domineering attitude and the dictatorial attitude go, and concentration on Jesus comes in.
By the simple argument of these verses Our Lord urges us to keep our minds filled with the notion of God s control behind everything and to maintain an attitude of perfect trust. Always distinguish between being possessed of the Spirit and forming the mind of Christ. Jesus is laying down rules of conduct for those who have the Spirit. Notion your mind with the idea that God is there. Once the mind is motioned along that line, when you are in difficulties it is as easy as breathing to remember Why, my father knows all about it. It is not an effort, it comes naturally. Before, when perplexities were pressing, you used to go and ask this one and that, now the notion of the Divine control is forming so powerfully in you that you simply go to God about it. You will always know whether the notion is at work by the way you act in difficult circumstances. Who is the first one you go to? What is the first thing you do? The first power you rely on. It is the working out of the principle indicated in Matthew VI. 25-34, God is my Father, He loves me, I can never think of anything He will forget, why should I worry? Keep the notion strong and growing of the control of God behind all things. Nothing happens in any particular unless God s mind is behind it, then I rest perfectly confident. There are times when God cannot lift the darkness but trust Him. Jesus said God will appear at times like an unkind friend, but He is not: He will appear like an unnatural father, but He is not; He will appear like an unjust judge, but He is not. The time will come when everything will be explained. Prayer is not only asking; it is an attitude of heart that produces an atmosphere in which asking is perfectly natural, and “everyone that asks receives.
A man will get from life everything he asks for, because he does not ask what his will is not in. If a man asks of life to make him wealthy, he will get wealth, or he was playing the fool when he asked. If ye abide in Me,” says Jesus, “and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you.” We pray pious blether, our will is not in it, and then we say God does not answer; we never asked Him for anything. Asking means that my will is in it.
You say But I asked God to turn my life into a garden of the Lord, and the first thing that happened was the ploughshare of sorrow, and instead of getting a garden I have got a wilderness. God never gives the wrong answer, He had to turn the garden of your natural life into ploughed soil before He could turn it into a garden of the Lord, He is putting the seed in now. Let God’s seasons come over your soul, and before long you will have a garden of the Lord.
We need to discern that God controls what we ask. We bring in what Paul calls ” will worship.” Will is the whole man active, there are terrific forces in the will. The man who gains a moral victory by sheer force of will is the most difficult man to deal with afterwards. The profound thing in man is his will, not sin. Will is the essential element in God’s creation of man; sin is a per verse disposition which entered into man. At the basis, the human will be one with God, covered up by all kinds of desires and motives, and when we preach Jesus the Holy Spirit excavates down to the basis of the will, and the will turns to God every time. We try to attack men’s wills; Jesus says Lift Me up, and I will push straight to the will. When Jesus talked about prayer He never said If your human will turns in that direction. He put it with the grand simplicity of a child Ask. We bring in our reasoning faculty and say Yes, but Jesus says ” If ye abide in Me, and My words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you.
If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask Him? But remember that you have to ask things that are in keeping with the God whom Jesus Christ reveals, things in keeping with His domain. God is not a necromancer; He is after the development of the character of a son of God. If I want to know the things of a man, I can get at them by the ” spirit of man which is in him,” but the things of the Spirit of God are ” spiritually discerned.”
The discernment needed here is the habitual realization that every good thing I have has been given to me by the sheer sovereign grace of God. Jesus says Get this reasoning incorporated into you How much have you deserved? Nothing, everything has been given to you by God. Then may God save us from the mean accursed economical notion that we must only help the people who deserve it. One can almost hear the Holy Ghost shout in the heart Who are you that you talk like that, did you deserve the salvation God has given you, did you deserve to be filled with the Holy Spirit? It is all done by the sheer sovereign mercy of God, then be like your Father in heaven, says Jesus, have a perfect disposition like His. Love as I have loved you.” It is not done once for all; it is a continual steadfast growing habit of the life.
Humility and holiness always go together. Whenever hardness and harshness begin to creep into the personal attitude towards one another, we may be certain we are swerving from the light. The preaching must be as stern and true as God’s word, never water down God’s truth; but never forget when you deal with others that you are a sinner saved by grace, no matter where you stand now. If you stand in the fulness of the blessing of God, you stand there by no other right than the sheer sovereign grace of God. Then, says Jesus, if you, an evil being, saved by grace, can do such kind things to others, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask Him?
Over and over again we blame God for His neglect of people by our sympathy with them, we may not put it into words but by our attitude we imply that we are filling up what God has forgotten to do. Never have that idea, never allow it to come into your mind. In all probability the Spirit of God will begin to show that it is because we have neglected what we ought to do that people are where they are! The great craze to-day is socialism, and men are saying that Jesus Christ came as a social reformer. Nonsense! We are to be social re formers, Jesus Christ came to alter us, and we try to shirk our responsibility by putting our work on to Him. What Jesus does is to alter us and put us right, then these principles of His will instantly make us social reformers. They will begin to work straightway where we live, in my relationship to my father and mother, to my brothers and sisters, my friends, my employers or employees. Consider how God has dealt with you, says Jesus, and then consider that you do likewise to others.
