Day 22

 

He Who Has Ears

 

He said to them, "Do you still not understand?"

 

Mark 8:21

 

I lived in a small apartment complex that only had about 40 units. It was mostly older people that lived there besides me and the young couple who lived above me.

One Saturday night I was awakened by a loud thump. It startled me and I thought it sounded like it came from the apartment next to mine but I ruled that out. There was an older lady who lived next to me who never made any noise so I figured it must have been the couple upstairs and I went back to sleep.

I awakened later in the night when I heard what seemed to be someone tapping on my wall. Again I figured it must be the couple upstairs and that the sound was traveling down my wall, so I went back to sleep again.

I got up on Sunday morning, headed for the shower to get ready for church. As I left the bedroom it sounded as if someone had faintly called my name. I paused but did not hear it again, so I went on and got ready for church.

After church that morning I came back to the apartments to find an ambulance in the parking lot. It was pulling out as I was pulling in. I parked my car and was walking to my apartment when the manager of the apartments approached me.

"What's with the ambulance?" I asked.

"It's the lady next door to you" he told me. "She fell in the middle of the night when she got up out of bed to get a glass of water. She couldn't get up but she was finally able to reach her cane. She said she was tapping on your wall with it trying to wake you up. She even called your name! Did you hear anything?"

 

Jesus was always saying, "He who has ears to hear, let him hear." I can only think of one guy in the Bible who didn't have an ear and his name was Malchus. Actually Malchus had ears but on the night Jesus was arrested in the Garden of Gethsemane, Peter cut Malchus' right ear off. Malchus was only earless for a short while because Jesus put the ear back on. So, when Jesus says, "He who has ears," he is talking to everybody. We all have ears, we just don't use them to listen all the time.

Sometimes it is not just a question of listening, but of understanding. In Mark chapter 6 Jesus feeds 5 thousand people with 5 loaves and 2 fish. In Mark chapter 8 Jesus feeds 4 thousand people, this time starting with 7 loaves of bread. After feeding the crowd, the disciples and Jesus get in a boat and cross the Sea of Galilee and the disciples only bring 1 loaf of bread. The disciples become concerned that they haven't brought enough bread with them.

Jesus interrupts their discussion about the lack of bread and asks his disciples some questions. "Do you still not see or understand? Are your hearts hardened? Do you have eyes but fail to see and ears but fail to hear?"

The disciples, like us modern day disciples, had ears but sometimes didn't listen. They sometimes listened but they didn't always understand. We read God's word and think, "Well this doesn't apply to me." We hear sermons and think the message was for someone else. We are just the same as I was at that apartment, we hear but we don't understand that the message was for us.

 

Upon Further Review:

 

Read Mark 8:14-21

• How many loaves of bread did the disciples bring with them?
• Did the disciples understand Jesus' comment about "the yeast of the Pharisees and that of Herod"?
• What was Jesus trying to get his disciples to understand?