Revelation 22:12–15: “(Look! I am coming soon, and My reward is with Me to pay each one according to what he has done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end.) Blessed are those who wash their robes so they can have access to the tree of life and can enter into the city by the gates. Outside are the dogs and the sorcerers and the sexually immoral, and the murderers, and the idolaters, and everyone who loves and practices falsehood.”
Remember, this is part of my series on the animal analogies of Jesus. Here He says, “Outside are the dogs,” and then He names the sorcerers, the sexually immoral, the murderers, the idolaters, and everyone who loves and practices falsehood.
The “dog” analogy for Jesus Christ here refers to people who will not be restrained by the Word of God. It is the contrast to being people who will be limited by what God wants them to be limited by.
Remember what I said yesterday from Matthew 7, where Jesus Christ said, “Do not give what is holy to dogs” (Matthew 7:6).
Look at Esau as an example of someone who has no value for things that are not tangible. If it is not tangible… someone told me, “If it doesn’t make money, it doesn’t make sense.”
That person does not have value for the intangible things of the Spirit, the intangible things of God. That person is all about what he can get in this world. That person is like the people Paul wrote about who suppose that godliness is a means of gain, rather than knowing that “godliness combined with contentment brings great profit” (1 Timothy 6:5–6).
Paul wrote that “the unbeliever does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him” (1 Corinthians 2:14). That is the dog. It is foolishness to him, because the things of God are spiritually discerned. So we are talking about a kind of people who have no value for what is truly valuable.
Again, Esau: Jacob said, “Sell me your birthright,” and Esau replied, “Look, I am about to die! What use is the birthright to me?” (Genesis 25:31–32). He exchanged what is intangible—what you cannot see the value of in the immediate sense—for a single meal.
Paul said, “If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we should be pitied more than anyone” (1 Corinthians 15:19, in essence). That is the spiritual thinking you come into. These “dogs” have zero level of spiritual thinking in them. That is what we are talking about. “Outside are the dogs.” They do not belong in what God is building—the kingdom of God—which must consist of people who are not setting their hearts on things on earth, but on things in heaven, whose reality is tied to what is not seen (Colossians 3:1–2; 2 Corinthians 4:18).
“The righteous one will live by faith” (Romans 1:17; Galatians 3:11; Hebrews 10:38). Faith is being confident of things you have not seen (Hebrews 11:1). I have not seen Jesus, but I am confident that He is right now at the right hand of the Father. I have not seen Jesus, but I know He is coming back again.
Some people will say, “We have heard this thing a million times. Somebody has said it before you.” It does not matter. These are the dogs—people for whom only what they can “smell” matters. You know the nose of the dog is very powerful. It is only what they can smell that can register in their mind. They have no connection to God, to the things of God, to the unseen reality of being spiritual people. But that is what we have been called to. We have been called to be people of the Spirit, to be spiritual people, whose life is now in Christ (Colossians 3:3).
“So, outside are the dogs.”
God bless you.