Doubt and Fear Having Ears to Hear and Eyes to See

Welcome to episode 90. We're not going to change anything up today.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God, and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. Spending time in the Word of God is the best way to spend time with God. Welcome to No Doubt, No Fear, Only Believe podcast, where we will encourage, inspire, and empower you to live your best life in Christ. Here's Greg.

Welcome to episode 90, testing out a new microphone in a new office. May hit a little echo in here. This is my company office at the RE/MAX real estate company, just to put a little corporate plug in there. We talked in the previous episode about the ears to hear, and I want to continue that, and I'm going to go to Matthew 13, and we're going to start at 12. For whoever has, to him more will be given, and he will have abundance, but whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken away from him. Therefore I speak to them in parables, because seeing they do not see, and hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand. And I want to stop right there for a minute, and just because we talked about ears to hear, I want to talk about eyes to see. And we're talking about seeing and hearing, but we're not talking about with the eyes that God gave you on your— in your head, and the ears that he gave you on your head. He— we're talking about the heart. We're talking about Do you have eyes in your heart or ears in your heart? Can you hear things without using your ears, and can you see things without using your eyes? And I think that's what Jesus is talking about. These are spiritual truths. These are not physical truths, and that's where it kind of gets a little bit muddy when you start looking at the Bible and you start thinking, "Well, I don't understand this. This is too difficult." It's really not if you take it from a spiritual standpoint. If you're looking at things strictly from a physical standpoint, the Bible is going to be very difficult for you to understand. But if you're looking at the Bible through a spiritual lens— and, and that's what I'm here to do, I'm here to help you a little bit to kind of look at the Bible in a different kind of a turn, to turn the light on— and these spiritual eyes and spiritual ears that Jesus is talking about, he's talking in parables, and it's, it's kept things hidden. And I want to go to one of, one of my favorite quotes in Proverbs. Hang on, let me look it up. It is in Proverbs 25:2, "It is the glory of God to conceal a matter, but the glory of kings is to search out a matter." So God is gonna hide it. It's to his glory to kind of make you dig it out, but it's to your glory if you're a king, and we're all kings. We're kings and priests, and I don't care if you're a woman or a man. There is no male nor female. There's no Jew, no Gentile. We are all king. Jesus is not the King of Kings and the King of Queens. He said, He is the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords. So it is a— when you, when you read the Bible and you read something like Proverbs 25:2, when it says it's the glory of kings to search out a matter, that's you. You need, you need to dig in there and you need to search it out. And then we're going to go back to Matthew and finish the, finish the lesson real quick, but it's about the eyes of your heart and the ears of your heart. These are spiritual eyes and spiritual ears. We need to find a different way of looking at things, and I think that's where God has given me a gift, given me a way to kind of look at something a little bit different, and it may not be different in the spirit realm. It may be what we're supposed to be seeing. And I wanna pick it up in Matthew 14. This is 13:14. And in them the prophecy of Isaiah is fulfilled, which says, hearing you will hear and shall not understand, and seeing you will see and not perceive. For the hearts of this people have grown dull, their ears are hard of hearing, And their eyes they have closed, lest they should see with their eyes and hear with their ears, lest they should understand with their hearts and turn, so that I should heal them. But blessed are your eyes, for they see, and your ears, for they hear. For assuredly I say to you that many prophets and righteous men desired to see what you see and did not see it, and to hear what you hear and did not hear it. Therefore, hear the parable of the sower. And I want to— there was a lot of seeing and a lot of hearing going on in those scriptures, but I just wanted you to listen to that and just kind of pick up the theme. And it was, you know, these people were— you know, you can listen without hearing. In the previous episode, remember, we quoted Romans 10:17, "So then faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God." And we're not talking about hearing with your ears. Now, it doesn't hurt you to hear the Bible with your ears. What I think Paul's talking about in that instance, hearing it inside of your spirit man and rolling it over and turning it over in your mind, will, and emotions where you're kind of digging it out and you're just kind of thinking about it and pondering it. 'Cause the more you think about something, the more you start taking ownership of it. And that's talking about planting the seed. And we talked, in fact, we're gonna talk about the parable of the different soil coming up, but it's, where we plant it, and then we don't— you know, once you plant a seed, you don't dig the seed up if you want it to grow. You plant it and then forget about it. That was in a previous episode as well where we talked about Mark 4:26-29, where the man should scatter seed and he sleep by night and rise by day, and he does not know how it grows. You're not— you don't have to know everything to plant a seed. You just got to have a good soil, and you gotta make the effort to plant it. And then you take care of the seed in the ground. You water it, you give it some nourishment. It's not you that produces the harvest. It's not you that produces the increase. It is the earth yields itself. That is an important distinction, is that once you plant the seed, it's not your business how it grows. It's your business to prepare the soil,, but it is not your business after you plant the seed. The next thing that you do is harvest when it ripens. So I want to go to Matthew 13:19, and then after he said this is— we'll go back to 18. Matthew 13:18: Therefore hear the parable of the sower. When anyone hears the word of the kingdom and does not understand it, then the wicked one comes and snatches away what was sown in his heart. This is he who receives the seed by the wayside. But he who received the seed on the stony places, this is he who hears the word and immediately receives it with joy; yet he has no root in himself, but endures only for a while. For when tribulation or persecution arises because of the word, immediately he stumbles. Now he who received seed among the thorns is he who hears the word, and the cares of this world and the deceitfulness of riches choke the word, and he becomes unfruitful. But he who received the seed on the good ground is he who hears the word and understands it, and indeed he bears fruit and produces some hundredfold, some 60, and some 30. Well, that's a, that's a mouthful, and that's a lot of scripture, but you know, that's okay because it's not going to kill you. In fact, it's probably going to help you the more you read and the more you dig into God's word. You heard all the things where Jesus was talking He who hears the word— and this is the word of God, this is a spiritual truth. Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word. So you've got to hear it, you've got to bring it into your, into your heart. And that's your spiritual— we're not talking about your ears, we're talking about your spirit ears. We're talking about you understand it. Now there's a difference, and I want to go into a whole nother teaching, and I'm just going to open the door to this one, and we're probably going to maybe go into it a little more on the next episode, but the difference between knowledge, understanding, and wisdom. Now, you know, you make— some of the people use those interchangeably, but I think there's three distinct differences between knowledge, understanding, and wisdom. And in the next episode, I'm going to touch on that, and I'm going to try to pull all this together. But I wanted— I just wanted to open that door so you were thinking about those 3 items. Because in, in the understanding, when he said in Matthew 13:23, but he who received the seed on the good ground is he who hears the word and understands it. So there's a difference between hearing it and understanding it, and we're going to touch on that in the next episode. But I just kind of looked up, and I want to try to keep these within 10 minutes, and I'm getting a little closer to my time. And I may even cut this one a little bit short just because, but I wanna pray real quick. God, I thank you so much for the person listening to this podcast, and I wanna pray that you would open up their understanding. Lord, show them the difference between knowledge, understanding, and wisdom. And Lord, I thank you for your word, and I pray that we would continue to plant it into our heart and that our heart would hear and that our heart would see and that we would have understanding and wisdom and knowledge. Lord, we thank you and we love you. We ask it all in Jesus' name. Amen. Well, thank you for being a part of this, and I look forward to talking to you on the next episode.

Thanks for listening to the No Doubt, No Fear, Only Believe podcast at www.nodoubtonlybelieve.com.