01.23. Difference in Hearing
Chapter 23 DIFFERENCE IN HEARING.
We read that on a certain day in the life of Christ on earth, God the Father spoke from the heavens to Him, saying, "This is my beloved Son; hear ye Him." This voice brought the remarkable fact to light that there were four kinds of ears, as some would say, or classes of hearers, as others would express it, in this crowd over which the sentence from Heaven sounded.
One class, truly speaking, were no hearers at all. They were so deeply engaged in attending to earthly things, or were in such a soul deadened condition, that not a single word spoken by the Almighty just over their heads was recognized by them. God had made these same hearing faculties, but sin and disobedience and fleshly mindedness had closed up the receptive organs of sound, and on the principle that the eyes of fish in the Mammoth Cave went out in the darkness; so the ears of moral beings from long inattention to the voice of God, ceased to hear at all, and while others heard and were blessed by messages from the skies, they were conscious of nothing themselves. The great sky arched above them, full of peopled worlds, rippling with wings of angels, and glorious with the omnipresence of God, had become to them only a great, empty, silent concavity, a vast depth containing nothing but space. A second class of hearers that day, thought when the Father spoke, "that it thundered."
Viewed in the light of the first class, this body of people, in the judgment of some, would be pronounced better off spiritually than the others. They heard something, while the former set remarked nothing. This may be so, but when we stop to consider the moral perversion and blundering spiritual judgment, betrayed in mistaking a blessed utterance of God, for a crash or boom of thunder, we fail to see where the character superiority comes in.
Infidelity that has made the sayings and commands of the Father in the Old Testament to be pronunciations of folly and cruelty, belong to the second division of the assembly of which we are writing. When men like Hume and Ingersoll attack the divine benevolence and wisdom in Leviticus and Deuteronomy, they make the loving voice of God to be thunder in its harsh, pitiless, terrifying power. This class is further seen in those who attend great and genuine revival meetings, where the Word is preached with the Holy Ghost sent down from Heaven, where conviction is deep, conversions bright and blood red, and sanctifications thorough and snow white. But all in vain the work of God goes on before such people. Even as at Pentecost this second division mocked and likened the work of the Spirit in the disciples to a drunken debauch; so to this day there are people in our religious gatherings in church and on camp grounds who pronounce the supernatural scenes before them to be excitement, fanaticism, and some bordering on the sin against the Holy Ghost even call it the work of the devil.
God is speaking from the pulpit, and about the altar, but they see only the physical side, hear only the natural, which is necessarily in this world connected with the spiritual, and go away criticizing and condemning what they termed frenzy and lack of self control. God spoke, and they said, "it thundered." A third class said of the voice that fell through the air, that an angel spoke to Christ. This division represents that part of religious and spiritual humanity that see, hear and attain to only a part of the truth and experience of Redemption. They sweep ahead of the first two bodies we have mentioned, but do not go far enough.
Many are content with morality. Others camp permanently in the realm of benevolence and humanitarianism. Still others stop at justification, and others still realize that there is a second work of grace, yet never receive the blessing and the witness of the Holy Ghost to it in their souls.
According to the Bible, as well as the evident lack of power in their lives, these individuals have halted too soon. They have come short of some fullness of knowledge, some satisfying experience, some great culminating grace, that is not only bound to be felt by themselves in their own hearts, but is patent to the spiritual, thoughtful observer who considers them. As in the case of the blind man under a first touch of the Saviour’s hand, they see, but not clearly and perfectly. And as in Jacob’s all night prayer wrestle, according to Micah the mysterious struggler seemed to be an angel but holding on, at daybreak the celestial visitant was revealed to be the Lord; so there are some in the spiritual life who never seem to get through into perfect light; never pray through to a day break sunrise revelation of God in their souls, and to walk the road of life thereafter, settled, assured, triumphant, princes in the judgment of Heaven and having power with God and man. A fourth class of people on this wonderful morning in the Temple, heard correctly. They knew who was speaking, what was said, and to whom the words came.
They heard God’s voice, and in that fact proved themselves to be of that saved number of whom the Saviour said, they hear His voice and know it.
They become at once a typical class of all these who have had a fullness of waiting before God, and received the fullness of the blessing of the Gospel of Christ. They stayed with the Saviour until He gave them the second touch, and now "see perfectly." They did not tarry by pools, troubled once a year by an angel’s wing, but sought Him who made all the pools, and created all the angels, and He made them whole. They went to the Upper Room and tarried until the fire fell.
They pray past the angel stage of Jacob’s prayer, and get through to the day break God Almighty revelation, when the Lord speaks to him in the deep sense of the word face to face.
Here is born a class that momentarily hear from headquarters. They walk and talk with God. Angel voices are good, but communion with the Almighty is far better. Why go down the stream for water when they have the Fountain Head? Why be sidetracked on a gift of the Spirit when they have the Spirit himself in His fullness? Why be disturbed and confused about what men say, when they not only have heard but continue every moment to hear in the sweetest, clearest, most heart satisfying and life strengthening way from God Himself? That all of the Lord’s people do not know Him thus, does not spring from divine partiality, but from the failure of a number of His followers to observe the conditions for the obtainment of so great a grace.
Just as in hearkening with the physical ear, there is a bent position of the body, the hand raised to the ear, and a fixed undeviating attention; so to hear satisfactorily from the Lord the body must be bowed, the hand of prayer raised and the whole soul fixed in the profoundest listening attitude, to hear what the Lord God will speak.
It costs something to send a telegram a few hundred miles, but the price is far greater to get a cablegram across the sea to another country. In like manner, is one will compute the distance from this world, across the seas of blue space, islanded with stars, to the capital of the Universe, it will be seen that the full charge on the Heaven-gram has not been paid. It takes all we are and have and ever shall be and possess, to get our dispatch through, hear from God, and receive full returns.
There is also everything in "turning aside" and getting in character position to receive messages from Heaven.
Moses was a very busy man, had numerous flocks and herds dependent on him for food and protection; but yearning to know more of, and to hear from God, he "turned aside" from his labors and everything, and saw and talked with Jehovah. After seeing the King of Heaven, he was well able to confront the monarchs of earth.
Daniel had the care and affairs of a kingdom upon him, but he took time to leave everything, and by the side of the river Hiddekel, for six weeks, waited on God. We need not tell the reader how, at the end of that time, wireless messages dated in Heaven came upon him so thick and fast that he sank overpowered on his hands and knees; such was the weight and glory of tidings that covered all time, and reached to the end of the world.
Elijah, in the effort to get away from human presence, went first three days’ journey into the desert, then a still longer trip into the wilderness, and afterward with mantle wrapped about his head, listened, and heard the "still small voice."
If people would study the spiritual significance of these things; would turn away from the vain janglings of men, observe the conditions and pay the price of a full, perfect communion with God, then no longer would be seen and heard the strife and divisions in the courts of the Temple when God speaks. But unity would be beheld and harmony would prevail. The Lord’s sheep would hear His voice and recognize it. And all would know Him from the least to the greatest among His own. The world would be convinced, souls saved by the multitude, and God would be glorified.
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