Hear God's Voice

“He who has ears to hear, let him hear.” (Matthew 11:15 ESV). At first this sentence seems out of place with little connection to what Jesus is saying. But realizing this to be a proverbial expression, frequently used by Jesus to draw attention to that which is important and which may require extra effort to understand, it then fits here as in many other places in Scripture. For example, see Matthew 13:9, Mark 4:23 and the end of each of the seven letters to the churches in Revelation.

When the reader encounters this expression, the command is too backup and read again what was written because it probably includes something of importance, which will require special attention to truly understand what is being said. In this current context, Jesus is saying that John the Baptist is the greatest of all, but the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater yet. Looking at verses 12 – 14, raises some interesting questions. How has the kingdom of heaven suffered violence since the days of John the Baptist? What have the prophets, of which John is the last, prophesied? How is John, Elijah who is to come? These are not easy questions to answer and may require extra study to understand. “He who has ears to hear, let him hear” is a speed bump to draw your attention too slow down and think about what you just read or heard.

Prayer

Father, so often, when we read the Bible, we just read over the surface, like we were snorkeling, but we need to slow down and do some scuba diving to experience some of the beauty found at greater depths. It seems to me that this command is asking us to do more scuba reading to learn more about the mature things of God. Father, the past two years of Bible study have been so rich as to cause the things of the world to become simply shadows of what is truly real.

See "The Commands of Jesus" Index to view other commands.