Is the Harvest Ripe or Rotten?

The following words are harsh and carry a biting candor. They are not my words; they are the words of our Lord, Jesus Christ. They are, thereby, the very word of God.

Matthew 7:6 (NKJV)
⁶ Do not give what is holy to the dogs; nor cast your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn and tear you in pieces.

If we take this as an absolute prohibition to every ministry to sinners, we make its meaning absurd. Jesus, was a friend of sinners and attached himself to them. In fact, every Christian was first a dog or a swine that had a Gospel pearl thrown to him or her by a faithful witness.

I remember a man named Ira, who I met while working in a walk-in Christian coffee house in the central business district of my home town. He was one of the finest Christian men I ever knew. Ira had an intriguing conversion testimony. He readily admitted that for the first twenty years of his marriage he would drink himself to a point of unconsciousness every weekend night. His wife would make him sleep on a cot in the basement. Ira had a neighbor who was a fine Christian man and one who had a compassion for the lost and spiritually perishing sinner. This neighbor persistently endeavored to reach him with the life changing truth of Jesus Christ – that is, his perfect life, atoning death, victory over the grave, his place at God's mighty right hand, and the certainty of his promise to return one day to restore his Kingdom in it full glory. Ira said they would talk way into the night, all the while Ira kept drinking, and to the wee hours of the morning. By his own admission, Ira was a mean drunk and would call his Christian friend every foul name he could. Still this Christian man would answer his abuse with kindness. One night just before Ira passed out; the man did something that finally reached Ira. He sat on the floor, with his back supported by the edge of Ira’s cot and he sang to him every gospel song he knew. Ira reported that he began to weaken and his heart began to soften as he realized that this Christian fool would humiliate himself by singing (badly) just to reach him with the Gospel.

While our Lord admonishes us to not labor too long with the stubborn sinner there is surely a place for persistence. Two challenges. Are you persistent in your aim to bring a lost friend or liberal colleague to the Savior? Perhaps, you are the dog or pig Jesus had in mind? Maybe your heart has grown cold to the saving power of the Gospel? Maybe you have turned on the messenger of Divine grace and torn such a one to pieces because you have so long resisted the call of the Spirit and persistently failed to turn away from your sin and toward the Savior?

Much of the energy that persecutes faithful witnesses to the Gospel within the Presbyterian Church (USA) are wild dogs and ravenous swine whose hearts are cold to the work of the Spirit. We can throw pearl after pearl after pearl to those who are ashamed of the Gospel. We can speak the truth in love to those who have replaced it with the latest political cause or with some form of shallow “spiritual” exercises. We can even try to win a hearing for the saving truth from those who have replaced the truth for a lie.

 

While this is a noble cause that has been advanced and blessed by thousands of missionaries in far more hostile environs than a middle class liberal dominated churchly setting; while we can wait for the movement of the Spirit to bring a sweeping revival in the PC(USA); while we can attach our love for the tens of thousands lost hell-bound sinners in its pews and pulpits, we can also shake the dust from our sandals and labor to gather the harvest in more promising fields.