Ear stoppers!
(You will find it helpful to LISTEN to the Audio, as you READ the text below.)
"But they refused to pay attention; stubbornly they turned their backs and stopped up their ears!" Zechariah 7:11
Alas, men's ears are still stopped up! An old Puritan has mentioned seven kinds of what he calls "ear stoppers," which need to be taken out of the human ear.
They are frequently blocked up by ignorance.
They know not the importance and value of the truth, and therefore they refuse to give earnest heed to it. Judging the Gospel to be an idle tale, they go their ways to their farms and to their business.
Some ears are stopped up by unbelief.
They have heard the glad tidings of salvation, but they have not received it as an infallible revelation from God, a message backed by divine authority.
Skepticism and philosophy, falsely so called, barricade the Eargate against the assaults of the Gospel, so that even the great battering-rams of the gospel prove powerless to force an entrance. "He could not do many mighty works, because of their unbelief!"
Others ears are stopped up by impenitence.
The hardness of the heart, causes a deadness of the ear! You may discharge the great cannons of the law in the ears of some men, but they will not stir. The thunders of God startle the wild beasts of the forest, but impenitence is not moved thereby. The gospel itself sounds upon such ears with no more effect than upon a marble statue. The groans of Calvary are nothing to them.
Some ears are stopped by prejudice.
They have made up their minds as to what the gospel ought to be, and they will not hear it as it is. They have set up for themselves a standard of what the truth should be, and that standard is a false one, for they have put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter, darkness for light and light for darkness.
The entrance into many ears is also effectually barred by the love of sin.
He who loves vileness, will not hear of repentance. The lover of pleasure, detests holy mourning. The immoral think holiness to be another name for slavery. The man who finds delight in sin, is a deaf adder whom the wisest charmer cannot charm. The poison of asps is under his tongue, and he cannot renounce his deadly hatred of a gospel which rebukes his evil ways. It would be vain to teach cleanliness to the swine which wallows in the mire--it loves impurity, and after impurity will it go.
Some ears are stopped through pride.
The plain, unflattering, humbling gospel of the sinner's Savior is not to their taste. The gospel for lost sinners, they think, is not addressed to them--for they imagine themselves to be good enough, and are by no means worthy of any great blame, or in danger of any great punishment. If the gospel flute could be tuned to notes of flattery, to praise the dignity of man--then they would attend to its music. But they will have nothing to do with a gospel for vulgar sinners! With their fine feathers all ruffled in disdain, they turn away in a rage.
Alas! how many ears are stopped through worldliness!
If you stand in a busy street where the constant thunder of rumbling wheels creates a din--it would be difficult to preach so as to command an audience, for the street noise would prevent all hearing. In the same way to a great extent, the mass of mankind are just in that position as to the joyful sound of the gospel. The rumbling of the wheels of commerce, the noise of trade and the cries of competition, the whirl of cares and the riot of pleasures--all these drown the persuasive voice of heavenly love, so that men hear no more of it than they would hear a pin fall in the midst of a hurricane. Only when God unstops the ear, is the still small voice of truth heard in the chambers of the heart.
"Whoever belongs to God hears what God says.
The reason you do not hear, is that you do not belong to God!"
John 8:47