Malachi does not open this section with an accusation about idolatry. He opens with a question that assumes something everyone in the room already knew: they shared one Father and one God. Commentators differ on whether this refers to God as Creator of all humanity or...
Pull all the threads of this week together and the whole verse turns inside out. We are not the priests guarding the pearls from the dogs. We were the dogs who were brought in. Go back to Welch’s four categories, holy, common, clean, unclean, and ask where you...
If we are honest, most of us are not really in danger of being too pushy with the gospel. We are in danger of being too quiet. So here is a warning that cuts the other way. Frederick Bruner observed that aggressive, insensitive evangelism gets converts and counts...
This is the hinge of the whole verse, and it is the part most easily abused. A critical spirit loves the words dogs and pigs. But understand the picture first. In Jesus’s day dogs were not pets. They were wild scavengers, the garbage collectors of the street,...
What are the holy things? What are the pearls? For a follower of Jesus, nothing is more precious than the gospel of Jesus Christ. The fundamental idea in the word holy, as Ed Welch traces it back through Leviticus, is being set apart for God. Welch points to Leviticus...
