Ears to Hear

Ears to Hear.  Eighteen times, in various combinations, our Lord commanded, “He who has ears to hear, let him hear” (Matt. 11:15). Let him hear is a bold imperative without any caveat! Jesus alone can fully issue such a summons because he fully listened to his Father.

Infinitely more than Moses and Elijah, Jesus alone had the force of prophecy behind him: “The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your brothers—it is to him you shall listen” (Deut. 18:15), coupled with the audible testimony of God the Father about him, “This is my beloved Son with whom I am well pleased—listen to him” (Matt. 17:5). Unlike the nation of Israel that repeatedly refused to listen to God, Jesus alone wielded the full weight of obedience: “Morning by morning he awakens; he awakens my ear to hear as those who are taught. The Lord God has opened my ear, and I was not rebellious; I turned not backward” (Isa. 50:5). Unlike the religious rulers of the day, Jesus alone carried the unblemished track-record while on earth: “I speak just as the Father taught me” (John 8:28). By contrast, Jesus said of the Pharisees, “You speak what you have heard from your father … the devil” (John 8:38, 44).

Surprisingly, it was not Jesus who first said those words, “Ears to hear.” He picked up where Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel left off. And they, too, picked up where Moses had left off. Despite Moses’ long career leading Israel, although Israel had the opportunity to hear God, they lacked the capacity to listen to God: “But to this day, the Lord had not given you a heart to understand or eyes to see or ears to hear” (Deut. 29:4). This paradox continued all throughout Israel’s history. They had access to the word of God but lacked belief in the God of the word. “But the word is very near you, in your mouth and in your heart, so that you may observe it” (Deut. 30:14; Rom. 10:8). Yet they persisted in their idolatry, bending their ears to hear a response from the idols that they had stylized with mouths, which were unable to speak. “[Idols] have ears, but do not hear” (Psa. 115:6). The horrible irony is as prevalent in modern times as it was in ancient epochs: “Those who make them become like them; so do all who trust in them” (Psa. 115:8). We begin to resemble that which we worship.

By the time Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel picked up the refrain from Moses. “His ears are open, but he does not hear” (Isa. 42:40) was a well-established loop. The prophets, however, were not permitted to stop speaking the word of God to the people, despite the people’s stubborn refusal to receive and believe the word. Failure to listen became a form of punishment to the people of Israel. Instead of hearing the Lord who loved them, then they would hear the trumpets of war (Isa. 18:3), the commotion of invading armies constructing their siege towers against Jerusalem (Isa. 22:5), and the babble of the foreign language of their slavers yanking them across the desert like livestock (Isa. 28:11).

The nonreceptivity of the people regarding the word of God continued into Jesus’ day. When he said, “Whoever has ears to hear, let him hear” (x18), it was both an illustration of life among those who were healed of their spiritual deafness and a confirmation of death among those who denied their deafness and so, remained unhealed. Jesus’ parables functionally eliminated the middle space between life and death, belief and disbelief.