“Listen to Me, all of you, and understand.... If anyone has ears to hear, he should listen!” (Mark 7:14-16). When the surgeons removed my brain tumor they also severed my acoustic nerve, leaving me partially deaf. Sometimes when I’m with a group of people I can hear the sounds of the conversation, but I can’t comprehend the words that are spoken. In other words, I know what it’s like to listen and yet not understand, to have ears that can’t hear. Jesus had summoned the crowd to Him and began what He said with, “Listen to me and understand.” But when His disciples were alone with Him in the house they asked Him to explain. They heard what He said, but didn’t understand.
As I have been studying the book of Mark I’ve come to the conclusion that no one really understood the message of salvation. The Pharisees were trying to be righteous by not only following the law, but in addition to God’s law they were trying to follow all the other rules and regulations that they had surrounded God’s law with. Jesus’ message was that righteousness was not obtained by following rules and regulations. Jesus explained that it’s the heart that causes defilement. A heart that is leaking evil thoughts, sexual immoralities, thefts, murders, adulteries, greed, evil actions, deceit, lewdness, stinginess, blasphemies, pride, and foolishness, isn’t cured by following the rules. But what is the cure for a wicked heart?
The heart of the problem is a problem of the heart. But what is the solution? If all that evil comes from within and defiles a person, then it seems like you need a spiritual heart transplant. I think that this story points to a deeper truth about the gospel than the disciples could comprehend. Ezekiel 11:19 says, “And I will give them one heart, and I will put a new spirit within you; and I will take the stony heart out of their flesh, and will give them a heart of flesh.” A heart transplant is done by the surgeon, not by the patient.
Whenever Jesus spoke a parable that explained a spiritual truth He added the words, “If anyone has ears to hear, let him hear.” Then when He was alone with His disciples they would ask Him what the parable meant. I think that in the same way we cannot do surgery on our own heart, we also cannot hear spiritual truth unless Jesus heals our spiritual deafness. Both the ability to hear and to be healed involve something we receive rather than something we do.
“Yet they did not obey or incline their ear, but everyone followed the dictates of his evil heart.... This evil people,who refuse to hear My words, who follow the dictates of their evil hearts... for behold, each one follows the dictates of his own evil heart, so that no one listens to me” (Jeremiah 11:18, 13:10, 16:12). What is the solution? I think that to hear and understand comes from the same place that the undefiled heart come from. It is a gift of grace. This is why the Word became flesh--so that the deaf ears can hear, and broken hearts can be made whole.
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