“Look,” said Stephen, “I see heaven open and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God.” At this they covered their ears and, yelling at the top of their voices, they all rushed at him, dragged him out of the city and began to stone him. – Acts 7:56-58
Years ago, when I was in graduate school at a state university, I traveled to an out-of-town conference with three of my classmates, one of whom was a Mormon. On the drive back he was sitting in the front passenger seat, and I was in the back driver’s side seat, when the talk in the car turned to religion. Naturally my Mormon colleague wanted to promote his particular religious views, but, since I have studied the LDS history and doctrine in depth, I responded with some pointed Bible questions he did not expect to encounter and could not answer.
Finally he said in frustration, “I guess this is just one of those areas in which we’ll have to agree to disagree.” “Yes, but let’s be honest,” I replied, “Each of us believes the other is wrong, and both of us believe it makes an eternal difference.” He was silent after that comment, so I began to ask yet another Bible question. In desperation, he did something I have never seen before or since: he rolled down his window, stuck his head out of the car into the onrushing air, and began loudly singing a Mormon hymn at the top of his voice! That effectively put an end to our religious conversation.
I thought of that episode when I read the account of righteous Stephen’s martyrdom in Acts 7. The members of the Sanhedrin listened attentively to Stephen’s lengthy recitation of Jewish history until he began to speak of Jesus. At that they responded in an astonishing way: they covered their ears and began yelling at the top of their voices, to drown out an unwelcomed truth.
One of Jesus’ favorite sayings is “If anyone has ears to hear, let him hear.” It is found three times in Matthew (1:15, 13:9, 14:43), twice in Mark (4:9, 4:23), twice in Luke (8:8, 14:35), and seven times in Revelation (2:7, 2:11, 2:17, 2:29, 3:6, 3:13, 3:25 – cf. 13:9) in the Lord’s messages to the Seven Churches of Asia. That statement implies that not everyone does have “ears to hear.” That’s why the marks of a “noble and good heart” are the willingness to hear the word, retain the message, and persevere in it (Luke 8:15). Paul warns the young preacher Timothy that people who don’t want to be confronted with an inconvenient truth will, “to suit their own desires, gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths” (2 Timothy 4:3b-4).
The Bible thus indicates that some individuals will tune out truth when they don’t wish to obey it. I would be making a serious mistake, however, if I only applied this principle to others. My ultimate concern should not be how God’s Word is received by my Mormon, Methodist, or Muslim friends, but rather how is it received by ME? James counsels all of us to “be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to become angry” but instead to “humbly accept the word planted in you, which can save you” (1:19-21).
The story is told of the preacher of a little country church who was frustrated with one of his church members, because every time the preacher gave a sermon that happened to address one of that member’s failings, it never seemed to register. Instead, the man invariably pumped the preacher’s hand at the back door and congratulated him on a fine message, exclaiming: “You sure told ‘em, today, preacher!”
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“I preached a sermon to a man,
To him and to no other,
And when he heard it, how he laughed,
He thought I meant his brother.”
Do I have “ears to hear”?
Dan Williams
