Though You Can See and Hear

"Though You Can See and Hear" – Matthew 13:15 Though you can hear and see, it is in your hands what you do with what you hear and what you see. Character is formed by our experiences, by what we have lived, and by what we decide; and in most cases it is easier for us to be obstinate and to believe we have every right to be. But we forget that life passes, that the days are spent and do not return, and that we have only one life. From Isaiah to Paul, by way of Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Zechariah and Jesus, the message is the same: the problem is not that God does not speak, but that the people harden their heart.

I. For this people's heart is waxed gross, and their ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes they have closed (Matthew 13:15).

A. God creates each one individually, and each one decides how he manages his life.

1. No one here is the same as another; you think you have met someone like you, and not even a twin is.

2. When God creates, He creates individually; if two are sent to the same womb, there is a purpose of God and a reason of God.

3. God forms us so that we would love Him, so that we would be able to serve Him and be faithful to Him.

4. As one is born and develops his character, you decide what you will be.

5. People say: it is my personality. And under that pretext we handle circumstances that, were we meek, we would know how to shape.

6. One makes a pattern of his life and from it prints each day his footstep: how to act, how to decide, and how to keep everyone at a distance.

B. We forget that life passes.

1. The days are spent, and those days will not come back.

2. Remember: we have one life. How many lives do you have?

3. In our manner of living and of being, we must know that either we do good or we do evil.

C. It is very easy to decide not to see and not to hear.

1. People say: I do not turn on the news because it upsets me. Then begin to watch it, so that it upsets you.

2. For there you are seeing and hearing, and you understand the state of the earth, why you must groan and why we must pray.

3. The young are being lost; how many women murdered these days? And there is no one to stop it.

4. To hear and to see, one must have a passion that tears us within, because that passion is what moves us to work.

5. When we begin to see and to hear, we could protect and take care.

6. Someone calls, someone has a need, I see, and the action is then and there. But the righteous man whom God calls to see and to learn to hear is another matter.

II. The heart waxes gross and the ears become insensible.

A. No one feels anything for anyone any more.

1. You see something, there is shouting, and you do not call the police: I want no trouble, I want to avoid trouble.

2. Among so much self-justification out of our own mouth and our own thinking, one gives the heart permission to harden.

3. When one is insensible, one is unable to value anything: one cannot perceive, one cannot understand.

4. You no longer have feeling for pain, and it becomes easy to hold a grudge.

5. A hard heart is the most comfortable thing: one sees another's need and says it does not matter, that the other is a squanderer.

6. So one defends oneself, and so one leaves behind the sign that the heart has been spoiled.

B. When the heart is spoiled, the earth grows harder.

1. The human being becomes more insensible, without any kind of compassion.

2. And those ears become insensible to the voice of God: they refuse.

III. Jesus speaks in parables to a people that no longer wished to understand.

A. The people before whom Jesus was speaking.

1. Jesus had already said He would speak it in parables, and His speech began to come out difficult.

2. To understand the parables one had to know religious terms, and the common people did not understand.

3. There came a moment when Jesus said: if they understand it is because they are willing; if they do not understand, it is because they do not want to.

B. Life is a heavy stone that grinds us.

1. We think life is comfortable and that life exists to please us.

2. In that mill, pain and rebellion grow sharper; the reasons, the why and the explanations grow sharper.

3. It is not that the days pass and things get easier: quite the opposite, for as the mill keeps grinding the grain, it keeps turning it to dust.

4. Then one grows more restless: but why does this happen to me? Why me?

C. Lest they should see, and hear, and understand, and be converted.

1. They knew that if they saw and heard, they would understand and repent, and God would heal them.

2. What the Lord wanted was that the people come to repentance; God has always wanted us to come to repentance.

3. If it goes by reasoning, each one has a different reasoning, and in the end no one hears and no solution is found.

4. But if you hear what is said, you begin to understand; and when you begin to understand, your eyes begin to see.

D. Though they could hear and see, they did not see Him.

1. What Jesus spoke set them free, but among the teachers of the Scriptures there was only a religious quarrel.

2. Who took Jesus to the cross? Not the sinners, not the lepers, not the sick.

3. For having rejected Jesus, their punishment would be to hear without understanding and to look without seeing at all.

4. The only place where God works is the heart, and what hardens in life is the heart.

5. When He led captivity captive, many rose and moved through the streets of Israel, and with all that they did not believe.

6. Seeing, they did not believe; and they heard the voice of the Master and did not hear Him either.

E. Spiritual indifference strengthens the flesh.

1. You become indifferent to the spiritual and want the carnal, what belongs to the world.

2. Everything the world gives you it will charge you for; everything Christ gives He does not charge for, because He already paid.

3. One stops being sensitive and closes his eyes so as not to see, drawing away from what is spiritual.

4. The flesh makes merry with us and afterward charges us for it.

5. Without noticing, we leave behind love, sensitivity, compassion, mercy and kindness.

6. To move the hand of God for the one in need, we would have to see and to hear; if we stop seeing and hearing, we do not see where God is.

F. There is no lack of ability, but of willingness.

1. When you are centred wholly on yourself, you will never be able to wash anyone's feet.

2. And it is not a matter of literally washing feet: it is doing for the one whose need is immediate, stranger or acquaintance, great or small.

3. Seeing and hearing have closed in these times more than ever, and as the years come it will be worse.

4. Not wanting to see, hear or understand is not being converted, because to be converted is to change one's life.

5. When Christ comes, we change our life; and the day of one's conversion does not fade: it increases and it is perfected.

IV. Make the heart of this people fat, and make their ears heavy, and shut their eyes (Isaiah 6:10).

A. God calls Isaiah in a time of sin.

1. It was a great labour for these men; it was no small thing to be a prophet.

2. The kingdom had already been divided: Israel had been carried away, and Judah remained, where the temple was and where the priests were.

3. From there Daniel and the others of that time were carried away.

B. The message would be strong and direct, and they did not receive it.

1. The heart of that people was waxed gross, wholly hardened.

2. They killed the children, they profaned and destroyed the temple, and they drove slaves on foot from Israel to Babylon without water: children, adults and the aged alike.

3. We could not say they did not deserve it: they did, because the heart was hardened.

4. And when the heart is hardened, God departs.

5. If that happened with Isaiah, with Ezekiel and with Jeremiah, what is left for our own day?

C. Spiritual hardness is a heart that is no longer moved.

1. It is easy to worship and to lift the hands; but hearing the word reproves, because the word is a sword that pierces.

2. It is the heart that no longer answers God before the suffering of others.

3. That suffering is when it falls to us to make war, to strive for our children, for our spouse, for our brother, and to deliver the church from the attacks that come against it.

4. For the church is not the chairs that are set out: the church is the body of Christ, and it is attacked hard, at times cruelly.

5. To wax gross is to have grown fat in sin: one no longer feels for anyone and lives wholly for himself.

6. The more you refuse to see and to hear, the more you reject; and the more you reject, the grosser your heart becomes.

D. The problem is not the lack of signs, but the hardness.

1. The word of God is in everything: in Isaiah, in Jeremiah, in Ezekiel, in Zechariah. The prophets were there.

2. But rejection reaches the point where prophecy is annulled and the word is not distributed.

3. Once the sisters prayed, handed out tracts and visited the homes; today the homes cannot be visited, because hearts have waxed gross.

4. If we give at all, it is because it suits us, not out of love. For love is what you give to another.

V. The word of the LORD is unto them a reproach; they have no delight in it (Jeremiah 6:10).

A. They have no delight in it.

1. Do you know why so many young people are so carnal? Because the word has not been taught to them.

2. The more years pass, the more the hearts of the young keep waxing gross.

3. And they will do no good to grandfather, nor to father, nor to mother, because it comes in a chain.

4. If you do not teach your children, that is the failure you leave behind on the earth.

5. For as a church God requires of us and as a church God claims us.

B. To whom shall I speak, and give warning, that they may hear?

1. Jeremiah voices the frustration of a prophet who speaks in God's name and the people pay no attention at all.

2. It looks as though they are listening, but the matter is not that they listen: it is how much enters the heart.

3. The more one cleanses the heart, the less gross it is.

4. For the heart waxes gross with malice, hatred, strife, envy, jealousy and rage; and all of it deforms us.

C. Their ear is uncircumcised, and they cannot hearken.

1. They are stopped, closed, impure, unable to receive the voice of God.

2. It is not a physical inability, but a spiritual one: they hear the sound, but do not obey nor take the word seriously.

3. And who is harmed? Oneself. But what is harmed in you will do harm to another.

4. If you hear and if you see, and you rise as that spiritual man or woman, you will do good; because you have good, and good is distributed.

D. It is unto them a reproach.

1. There comes a time when the word of God becomes a shame to many, and instead of honouring it they mock it.

2. They think it ridiculous or uncomfortable to live according to what God commands.

3. Deep down they have no affection nor esteem for it, because the problem is a hardened heart.

4. I do not count membership: I prepare soldiers, and not those at the rear, but those at the front who fight, like those who fought with David.

VI. Which have eyes to see, and see not; they have ears to hear, and hear not: for they are a rebellious house (Ezekiel 12:2).

A. A rebellious house.

1. God calls by that name the very people He raised up, and that is dreadful.

2. You are here because God raised you up; you are not here for nothing.

3. How much moving there has been in heaven for you to be born, and how much has had to be fought for you to stand here today.

4. It is easier to lead a rebellious, carnal house than to lead a church that loves the Lord with all its strength.

B. Disobedience and resistance to His word.

1. To live resisting His word affects us all: he who suffers here, I suffer with him.

2. It is not ignorance: the problem is wilful rebellion.

3. The people witnessed every sign and heard the prophets, but would not acknowledge the truth.

4. And the truth is what makes us free; what you need in order to be free is the word.

C. They have eyes to see, and see not.

1. They have the capacity to understand, but they closed their spiritual eyes.

2. The capacity is there, but it is easy to shut one's eyes to what is spiritual.

3. Ears to hear is said by Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and Zechariah, and Jesus repeats it in Matthew 13:15.

4. You must hear the voice of God every day of your life: open the Bible, read it, and you will see your life go better.

5. Generation after generation the people hardened their heart; whoever hardens his spiritual ears and eyes falls into judgment.

VII. But they refused to hearken, and pulled away the shoulder, and stopped their ears, that they should not hear (Zechariah 7:11).

A. They refused to hearken.

1. It is easier to look aside, watching the people, than to look straight ahead.

2. This message you will not hear again; the effect lies in how much you receive of it today. Today is the day.

3. Here it is not that they could not, but that they chose not to heed the voice of God.

4. It was not a sickness, it was not death, it was no necessity: they chose it. It is a wilful rejection.

B. And pulled away the shoulder.

1. It is a strong image of rebellion and of contempt.

2. Contempt is what has no value, what is unworthy, what is indifferent; contempt is mockery and rejection.

3. To turn the back meant not acknowledging the authority of God nor His word. That is what we see today.

C. And stopped their ears, that they should not hear.

1. Literally they shut themselves to the voice of the prophets.

2. It was not a lack of understanding, but a decision to harden themselves.

VIII. And they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables (2 Timothy 4:4).

A. They shall turn away their ears from the truth.

1. When a heart does not love the truth of God, it turns from it and fills with lies that seem attractive but deceive.

2. They are people who decide not to hear the word of God.

3. It is not that they cannot hear, but that they will not; they prefer to move away from the truth because it makes them uncomfortable.

4. A child has the capacity to learn: do not bring your children as though they were unable to hear the word.

B. And shall be turned unto fables.

1. To old wives' fables, to fantasy.

2. Instead of the truth of the Gospel they will seek invented stories, myths or false teachings that sound attractive but are not of God.

3. It is choosing what entertains or what pleases, instead of what confronts.

4. And the point is not that it confronts, but that it will go on to transform.

C. The same message from Isaiah to Paul.

1. By way of Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Zechariah and Jesus, the message is the same; and today the message is still the same.

2. The problem is not that God does not speak, but that the people harden their heart.

3. And this is not said as a celebration: it is said with agony and with sorrow.

4. Shutting the ears to the truth leads to falling into the lie.

5. God always offers healing and salvation, but it depends on whether the people will open their eyes, their ears and the heart, which is the principal thing.