The Responsibility of Hearing

Take heed what ye hear. Mar 4:24

Take heed therefore how ye hear. Luk 8:18 

Everyone can be misunderstood, and everyone can be biased

It is always a risky affair to interpret the work of a serious writer at first reading. Most demand a second or even a third reading, or longer, as Kafka and James Joyce.

Only the Bible demands a lifetime of reading or ‘hearing’.

But an even greater risk is the work of interpreting people. For we can only know them outwardly, and only partially, even though they be a complete enigma.

You are ‘a text’ the Lit teacher said.  And the Apostle wrote, ‘Ye are our epistle written in our hearts, known and read of all men.’ 

And conjoined to this work of reading is the work of hearing. The twentieth century Scottish preacher and writer George Morrison has written a wonderful devotional on this topic, and it is in this regard that I am greatly indebted to him for this blog…“It is not really by the eye we see. It is really by the soul we see. And it is not by the ear we hear. It is indeed by the character we hear. By all we love, by all we have made ourselves, by all we have striven for or lusted after, do we take the words which fall on every ear and color them with heaven or with hell. Take heed what you hear. It is a revelation of your personality. It is in the verdicts which you are always passing that your responsibility begins.

“The same thing is always happening in the hearing of the Gospel message. A hearer's judgment of a Gospel sermon is really the judgment of himself. With patient and with prayerful diligence a minister prepares his message. He has his ideals of what preaching is, and from those ideals nothing will make him swerve. And then, often in fear and trembling, and sometimes with a joyous sense of liberty, he gives his message to his beloved people. It is the same message which falls on every ear, and yet how varying is the reception! All that is living in the hearer's breast rises up to meet a living message, and rises in welcome or defiance. Men hear with all that they have made themselves. They hear with every sin that they are clinging to. Every ambition, every joy or sorrow, comes to the hearing of a Gospel sermon. And that is why to one it shall be weariness, and to another a thing to be disproved, and to a third, in hungriness of heart, the message shall be the very bread of angels. It is a great responsibility to preach. It is a great responsibility to hear. I know no teacher except Jesus Christ who has laid such tremendous emphasis on hearing. For Him there is nothing mechanical in hearing. It is the response of what a man has made himself. It is the swift reaction of the character, and character is destiny.”

On the use of parables and why people ‘stop their ears.’

When the disciples asked Jesus why he spoke in parables, he gave them an interesting answer, ‘because they seeing see not; and hearing they hear not, neither do they understand… For this people's heart is waxed gross, and their ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes they have closed; lest at any time they should see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and should understand with their heart, and should be converted, and I should heal them’ (Mat 13:13,15). 

“A parable is a shell that keeps good fruit for the diligent, but keeps it from the slothful” so expounds Matthew Henry, “There are many that see the gospel light, and hear the gospel sound, but it never reaches their hearts, nor has it any place in them [2.] It is just with God to take away the light from those who shut their eyes against it; that such as will be ignorant, may be so; and God’s dealing thus with them magnifies his distinguishing grace to his disciples. The evangelical prophet that spoke most plainly of gospel grace [Isa 6:9-10], foretold the contempt of it, and the consequences of that contempt…And because they are resolved to be ignorant, they shut both the learning senses; for their eyes also they have closed, resolved that they would not see light come into the world.”

‘And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil’ (Joh 3:19). 

“Let us therefore fear, lest by sinning against the divine grace, we sin it away.”

‘But blessed are your eyes, for they see: and your ears, for they hear’ (Mat 13:16).  Isaiah writes (32:3) ‘And the eyes of them that see shall not be dim, and the ears of them that hear shall hearken.’

“They who have the truth of grace, shall have the increase of grace, even to an abundance in glory.”

Let us pray that God would count us all among the blessed ones today and forever more!