“Let Us Hear and Do”
“He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.”
These words of Christ’s are spoken to each of the uniquely addressed seven Churches of God found in Asia Minor. The expression was repeated to each church area for a purpose. It is an expression intended to vigorously grab our attention so that we do not miss what He has said!
Each aspect of the statement is designed to stir us to action. “He who has an ear” intimates that Christ is speaking to those who have been baptized and received the Holy Spirit. Regarding that Spirit, the Apostle Paul writes, “For in fact the body is not one member, but many” (1 Corinthians 12:14). Without the Holy Spirit, we simply would not be able to spiritually hear. So, great impetus is put on us to do so!
The rest of Christ’s statement, “let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches,” means we are to be motivated to both hear and do. To actually hear something on a spiritual level requires action – the converted hear, believe and do. To us, James says, “Thus also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead” (James 2:17). The spiritually dead hear and do nothing.
God, through His Spirit, certainly speaks to us daily and has just recently spoken to us extensively through the fall holy day season. He wants us to both hear and do, which requires spiritual alertness. Solomon warns: “Laziness casts one into a deep sleep, and an idle person will suffer hunger” (Proverbs 19:15). In like manner, spiritual laziness can lull us to sleep so that we cannot benefit from the application of what we have just heard at the Feast.
Solomon went on to say, “A lazy man buries his hand in the bowl, and will not so much as bring it to his mouth again” (Proverbs 19:24). Concerning this person, Clark’s Commentary says, “Is too lazy to feed himself, if he dips his hand once in the dish, he is too lazy to put it in a second time. It is a strange case that a man, through his excessive slothfulness, would rather starve than put himself to the trouble to eat.” On the spiritual level, such is the case with the majority of humanity today.
Why are so many spiritually asleep today? Of the nations of Israel today, the Apostle Paul wrote, “Just as it is written: ‘God has given them a spirit of stupor, eyes that they should not see and ears that they should not hear, to this very day’” (Romans 11:8). God gave them a spirit of stupor because they did not want to see, hear or do. And that is the spiritual environment that you and I are living in presently.
“He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.”
Marshall Stiver
