“Whoever has ears, let him hear”, Jesus said when teaching His disciples and the people who gathered to hear Him speak (Matthew 13, Mark 4 and Luke 14); for the most part when speaking to the people He spoke in parables, explaining to His disciples the meaning of the parables later when they were on their own often in response to the questions they asked Him.
In Revelation chapters 2, 3 and 13, the apostle John, writing to the churches said, “whoever has ears, let him hear what the Spirit says” because by the time he was on the Isle of Patmos, Jesus had ascended to the Father and the Holy Spirit had come at Pentecost.
At this point, the obvious question is: but doesn’t everyone have ears? In wisdom Solomon wrote “ears that hear and eyes that see, the Lord has made them both” (Proverbs 20:12). It turns out the Father created two kinds of ears, the one set of ears given when we are born on the earth as part of the senses with which we hear the natural world, and a second set given when we are born again or born above by the Spirit of God.
Understanding His sovereign purpose
Let’s begin with the children of Israel: In Deuteronomy 29, Moses told the children of Israel that despite the miracles they experienced in the wilderness, the LORD had not given them a mind that understands or eyes that see or ears that hear; Moses asked the children of Israel to renew their covenant with God, seal their words with an oath and carefully consider the consequences of disobedience. When Isaiah (prophet to Israel), saw the Lord and heard Him by the Spirit, he was commissioned to go and tell the people, “‘Be ever hearing, but never understanding; be ever seeing, but never perceiving.’; the hearts of the people were made calloused, their ears dull and their eyes closed so they could not see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts and turn and be healed; the purpose of the Lord was to allow this to continue until land was utterly forsaken and even though a tenth remained, it was again laid waste, until the holy seed was all that was left as a stump in the land.
This same prophet saw by the Spirit, the time when the eyes of those who see will no longer be closed, and the ears of those who hear will listen, the fearful heart will know and understand and the stammering tongue will be fluent and clear (Isaiah 32); the time of the kingdom when the king reigns in righteousness and the nobles administer the justice of the Lord.
The choice not to hear
As foolish as it may sound, Scripture provides evidence of those given the capacity to hear who choose not to hear. Zechariah challenged the people of Israel and their priests after their seventy years of captivity to answer the question, “when you fasted and mourned in the fifth and seventh months for the past seventy years, was it really for me that you fasted?; and when you were eating and drinking, were you not just feasting for yourselves? ” When he spoke to them again by the Spirit, telling them that the Lord Almighty said, “administer true justice; show mercy and compassion to one another; do not oppress the widow or the fatherless, the foreigner or the poor, do not plot evil against each other”, it is said “they refused to pay attention; stubbornly they turned their backs and covered their ears. They made their hearts as hard as flint and would not listen to the law or to the words that the LORD Almighty had sent by his Spirit through the earlier prophets”. The Lord Almighty’s response was “when I called, they did not listen; so when they called, I would not listen.’ (Zechariah 7). In Acts 7, Stephen confronted their descendants before they stoned him calling them a “stiff-necked people!” whose “hearts and ears are still uncircumcised”, just like their ancestors who always resisted the Holy Spirit!”
The writer to the Hebrews explains that we are not absolved of the consequences of hardening our hearts stating that we “have not come to a mountain that can be touched and that is burning with fire; to darkness, gloom and storm; to a trumpet blast or to such a voice speaking words that those who heard it begged that no further word be spoken to them, because they could not bear what was commanded: the sight was so terrifying that even Moses said, “I am trembling with fear,” but we “have come to Mount Zion, to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, to thousands upon thousands of angels in joyful assembly, to the church of the firstborn, whose names are written in heaven, to God, the Judge of all, to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, to Jesus the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel. He urged us to ”see to it that you do not refuse him who speaks; if they did not escape when they refused him who warned them on earth, how much less will we, if we turn away from him who warns us from heaven?”
Uncircumcised hearts are those that have not surrendered to the purging and cleansing of the Spirit of truth who has come to convict of sin, righteousness and judgment and uncircumcised ears despite the capacity to hear, will not hear because they resist the Holy Spirit and choose their own way. Who ascends the holy hill of God? – He who has clean hands and a pure heart.
The blessing of the hearing ear
In Matthew 13, the disciples came to Jesus and asked, “Why do you speak to the people in parables?” He replied, “Because the knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of heaven has been given to you, but not to them. Whoever has will be given more, and they will have abundance. Whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them. This is why I speak to them in parables: “Though seeing, they do not see; though hearing, they do not hear or understand. In them is fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah: “‘you will be ever hearing but never understanding; you will be ever seeing but never perceiving. For this people’s heart has become calloused; they hardly hear with their ears, and they have closed their eyes. Otherwise they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts and turn, and I would heal them. But blessed are your eyes because they see, and your ears because they hear. For truly I tell you, many prophets and righteous people longed to see what you see but did not see it, and to hear what you hear but did not hear it.”
Paul wrote to the Corinthian church that the wisdom of God is revealed by His Spirit, a mystery hidden that God destined for our glory before time began. He wrote, “What no eye has seen, what no ear has heard, and what no human mind has conceived, the things God has prepared for those who love him— these are the things God has revealed to us by his Spirit. The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God. For who knows a person’s thoughts except their own spirit within them? In the same way no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. What we have received is not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may understand what God has freely given us. This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, explaining spiritual realities with Spirit-taught words.”
In this hour of the dawning of the kingdom, let he that hath an ear hear what the Spirit is saying.
