"Whoever has ears, let them hear."
The Lord's words as recorded in Isaiah 6 and repeated in Mark 4 and Matthew 13 are familiar to most Christians, and even some unbelievers. In its context, the Lord is talking about the hard-hardheartedness of the Israelites and those in the crowd as Jesus taught. In the ESV, it's related in Matthew 13 as follows:
"Whoever has ears, let them hear.”
The disciples came to him 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 an 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.’
I've always taken the "seeing they do not see," and "though hearing, they do not hear" as a euphemism for they didn't get it. And then later, when I really read the passage, I took it to mean the Lord blinded them so that they didn't understand, because "the secrets of the kingdom of heaven" wasn't theirs to hear or see.
However, there is a literal aspect to this scenario, which I finally caught onto this past week. I sometimes listen to audio books during my drive to work. At one point, something in the reading caught my attention, and I realized my mind had drifted moments before. This isn't anything new--I've been a daydreamer since I was little, and I often find myself on some mental adventure or sorting through story ideas.
When I daydreamed on this occasion, I missed something in the book that I would have liked to have heard, and the verse, "hearing, they do not hear," came to mind.
I technically heard what was being said, but I didn't hear it. I then began to think of all those who literally heard the prophets and those who were blessed enough to hear Jesus speak, and yet they didn't hear what anyone was saying. They weren't deaf. They could hear if they so chose, but their minds were on something they felt was more important.
The Lord indicated the secrets of the kingdom of heaven didn't belong to these people. If you attend church because it's the right thing to do, because your parents taught you to, because you need to network for your business, or because your granddaddy helped build the structure (true story, and the lady made sure I knew it minutes after I walked through the door) and you know that you sit through an entire sermon with your mind on anything but what's being taught, the Lord's words should scare you.
The Lord ended the parable by saying, "Whoever has ears, let them hear." I'm assuming he meant that in the literal sense as well as in the figurative. Our minds will drift at times--that's natural and keeping constant focus is a struggle for me--but if we're serious about our faith and salvation, we cannot allow our attention to perpetually drift away from the teaching of the Word of God.
May all we who have ears hear and understand that.