A man became convinced he was losing his hearing. He went to a specialist, who gave him a thorough checkup. The doctor brought out a ticking clock, and asked, “Can you hear this ticking?” The man replied, “Of course.”
The specialist walked to the door and held up the clock again. “Now can you hear it”? The man concentrated and said, “Yes, I can hear it clearly.”
The doctor walked out the door into the next room and said, “Can you hear it now?” The man said, “Yes”
“Well,” the doctor said, “there’s nothing wrong with your hearing. You’ve simply quit listening.”
How many of us have been accused of selective hearing, hearing only what we want to hear, and tuning out the rest? It’s a classic form of hearing...but not listening. Hearing is a matter of sound wave frequencies vibrating tiny bones in our inner ears that transmit signals to the brain through tiny nerve endings going to the brain, which then interprets those signals. If everything’s intact, we hear sounds and are able to interpret them. But if those inner ear bones, or the nerves, are damaged, or deteriorated, an unable to respond properly to sound wave frequencies, sound is distorted so we no longer “hear” well, if at all.
People may be more discerning of certain sounds than others, like mothers able to distinguish their child’s cries among other sounds, or hearing our name called in a noisy crowd. Loudness, speed of talking, and body language lets us “hear” beyond a person’s words. We hear many sounds around us at any given point in time, but filter out the noise from sounds that have meaning to us. We may be sleeping soundly, not hearing a TV left on, but wake up abruptly to an alarm clock.
While the human ear only hears a limited range of frequencies, animals have greater ranges of frequencies they can hear. Animals can even see by hearing, emitting sounds that are reflected back and interpreted. even in total darkness. Bats, for example, send out sounds that are reflected back and “heard” enabling them to determine the location and distances of objects. Deaf people read lips or understand sign language, enabling them to “hear” by sight.
So hearing is about receiving and interpreting the many sounds around us. Unless those sounds are somehow blocked before reaching us, we can respond to them. Selective hearing then is the ability to block out, or ignore, certain sounds. It’s most likely a term used to complain about being ignored by another.
Listening, however, is a very different matter. It takes focus, paying attention, to fully understand what is being heard. Effective communication requires focused hearing and listening. You might be talking with someone, expecting them to be listening to you, but they hear certain trigger words that remind them of something that they must interrupt to relate. Or they’re so focused on preparing their response to something you’ve said, they quit listening. Or they’re just not interested, and quit listening .
The significance of all this is not about communications between humans, but rather to improve our listening to God. Many people complain that they can’t hear God speaking to them, even suggesting that God doesn’t even hear their prayers. Scripture throughout the Bible tells us very often that God does hear, and listens to our every prayer, even the foolish ones. But hearing Him, and listening to Him, are often different matters. Selective hearing even affects our listening to God. Choosing what we want to hear, blocking out His Word and His Voice at other times. People complain that since they can’t hear God, God must not be speaking to them. And that’s what I’ll be talking about, any you’ll hopefully be listening to, this morning.
God speaks to us in different ways. We tend to think of prayer as us telling God our problems and wants. But, let’s remind ourselves that prayer is also a means of hearing Him, listening for Him speaking to us. When you come to a railroad crossing, around the red lights on each side of the crossing, are the words, “Stop. Look. Listen.” I think that’s also a good reminder for us coming into prayer. We have a tendency to begin our prayers by speaking, when we should instead be preparing to be in a listening mode, focusing on being in God’s Presence. So, we need to first Stop! Think about what we’re doing: coming to the Almighty, the King of Creation, who loves us and wants to help, but not as our servant patiently waiting to serve us.
The second warning is to Look! This would be important if we were concerned about the danger of an approaching train at a railroad crossing. Applying this to prayer, though, while we’re stopped, calming our soul, we should be looking for God’s Presence around us, preparing to communicate with Him as a friend, remembering all He has already done for us. Our Call to Worship is an example of seeing images of God’s presence from the 23rd Psalm and John 10, where Jesus refers to Himself as the Good Shepherd. We see the images of our Good Shepherd calling us, His beloved sheep, by name, leading us to green calm pastures, and refreshing, still waters, His peace calming our souls. Sometimes when we pray, we may have urgent worries and fears that have our immediate attention. Then remembering His reassuring promise that even when we walk through dark valleys, He’s with us, defending and comforting us in those dark times. The psalms are filled with images of lament, fear, praises, and questioning, that may also help us identify strategic similarities.
At a railroad crossing, even though we’ve stopped and looked, we might not see a fast moving train approaching from around a bend, so the third part of that warning is to Listen! You might hear the train, or the train’s horn before you even see the train. Applying this to prayer though, once we’ve stopped long enough to block out the noise of the world, looked for His presence with us, we can then listen for Him. We may not hear Him during our time in prayer, but knowing He is present with us and hears us, assures us He will answer us according to His will, at the right time. In Psalm 5, David wrote that He laid His requests before God each morning, then waited, expectantly, for His answers. He had stopped in the early morning, before the distracting pressures of the day descended, communicated with God, then waited expectantly for God’s response.
Our OT lesson from I Samuel is another powerful example. In those times, married women who could not bear children, especially a son, were seen as being in disfavor with God. Hannah was loved deeply by her husband, but she hadn’t been able to conceive. She finally went to the Temple and pleaded for a child, even promising that if she was given a son, she would have him raised in the Temple as God’s servant. So intense was her prayer, kneeling while her lips moved silently, that the priest, Eli, thought she was drunk, and babbling repetitiously. God granted her prayer, and her son Samuel was born. As promised, after weaning him, she took him to Eli to raise in the Temple as a servant of God. She had stopped, looked for God, and listened for, and saw His answer. In those days, Israel was ruled by judges. Not in the sense of an interpreter of the law, but as a leader who God spoke through to govern His people. But the people had already stopped listening to God, so God had not spoken to the people for many years before Samuel. In our lesson, Samuel, now a boy about 11 or 12, hears a voice calling him. As a faithful servant, he believes Eli had called him and goes to him. But Eli hadn’t called, and sent him back to bed. Samuel hears his name again, and as a faithful servant, again runs to Eli. Eli hadn’t called him, but correctly perceives God is calling Samuel, and instructs the boy that if it happens again, he is to say “Speak Lord, for your servant is listening”. What a servant response even for us. “Speak Lord, I am listening.“ Samuel obeys Eli when God calls him again. God tells Samuel Eli’s punishment for not disciplining his two wicked sons who were priests in the temple. Reluctantly, Samuel relates God’s words to Eli, and when Eli later learns his sons are killed taking the Ark into battle, Eli falls backward, resulting in his death. Samuel continues to listen to God, as God’s faithful spokesperson, and the greatest Judge in Israel’s history.
The significant takeaway for us from this lesson is that Samuel became such an effective servant for God by his continued faithfulness, living by his earlier response, “Speak, Lord, for thy servant is listening.” The significance of listening in prayer, is that God speaks the most...when we listen.
What other ways can we hear God speaking? How do we even know if it’s God speaking to us? This is the significance of Scripture. As we heard from John 10, Jesus tells us we are the sheep His pasture. Those who have heard and accepted His call on our lives. His sheep follow him because they hear Him, know his voice, and follow Him.. It’s not His voice if it doesn’t agree with Scripture. So if any voice tells us to harm someone because they’re gay, or of another race or religion, it isn’t from God, who tells us to love and forgive others, even our enemies. We pray the prayer Jesus Himself taught, asking Him to forgive us in the same way we forgive those who sin against us. We don’t have to allow others to corrupt our beliefs, but neither can we witness for Jesus by hateful actions against others. We cannot know the Word of God, His voice, unless we hear His Word, study His Word, and live by it. Nor can we be God’s voice to others unless we know His Word. In his Epistle, James writes “Faith without works is dead.” And without doing His works, based on what we know His Word tells us, our faith is meaningless.
Even actively listening, in prayer, in studying God’s Word, and attempting to live by it, we have the power of the Holy Spirit to guide us, as our Advocate, coming alongside of us, as our internal voice of God speaking to our hearts. By His Prevenient Grace, the Spirit nudges unbelievers to accept Jesus in their lives, even before knowing Him, and continues to work within them. Not only is it important to hear the Holy Spirit speaking, He helps us to listen in prayer, in understanding Scripture, and in discerning God’s voice from the noise around us. Paul tells us in Romans 8 that the Holy Spirit knows the mind of God, and even when we don’t know how to pray, He intercedes for us in sighs too deep for words.
In our Gospel Reading, Jesus said the times were coming when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear, shall live. In context, Jesus hadn’t yet been crucified and resurrected when He preached this message, so the time was still to come when the physically dead and spiritually dead would respond to Jesus following His Resurrection. The "dead" here can be understood spiritually and physically. Spiritually, referring to those who are dead in sin, where Paul speaks of being dead in our sins. Physically, it foreshadows the future resurrection of the dead at the end of the age. Hearing His Word, in biblical terms, implies obedience and acceptance, so that those who respond to Jesus' voice will experience new life, both spiritually now, and physically in the resurrection.
Hearing Jesus is easiest in sincere Communion, while humbly and silently listening to Him. The gravity of Him saying, “take, eat, this is my body, broken for you”, and” my blood shed for you for the forgiveness of sins”, and His overwhelming love being conveyed, goes beyond words.
Those who still think God doesn’t speak to us, may be guilty of selective hearing, Not stopping, looking, and listening in prayer, not waiting expectantly for His answers. Not listening to His voice in Scripture. Not hearing the Holy Spirit speaking within us, guiding us to Him. Not knowing His presence in Communion. Only when we’re willing to bow humbly before Him, ready to listen, can we then say, like Samuel, “Speak Lord, for Your servant is listening.” Amen
