Matthew 13:16

BLESSED EYES AND BLESSED EARS

‘Blessed are your eyes, for they see: and your ears, for they hear.’

Matthew 13:16

The senses of sight and hearing are avenues of knowledge and of pleasure. The capacity and disposition to receive heavenly illumination and intelligence, satisfaction and communion, are accordingly admirably set forth by a reference to these higher senses.

I. The vision and the voice. (a) What the first disciples saw and heard. When Christ was here, His disciples saw Him fresh from His baptism and temptation, performing miracles before wondering spectators, transfigured, tried and crucified, risen, and ascending! They heard his teaching on the Mount, His parables, His reproaches of Pharisees, His encouragements to sinners, His discourse in the upper chamber, His cry on Calvary, His final benediction. They ‘beheld His glory’; they knew that ‘never man spake like this man!’ And after the descent of the Spirit, they witnessed the advance of His kingdom, and heard the tribute of adoring love. (b) What we see and hear. We may have seen and heard more of Jesus than even His contemporaries, for we have the enjoined testimony of many. And we see Christ as rendered in the life of His people, and of the new humanity.

II. The spiritual sight and ear.—In order that the visible and audible may be apprehended, there are needed the faculty, the cultivation and exercise of the faculty, and the opportunity. In the ministry of Christ were those who were lacking in one or other of these. There were those like Simeon, the centurion, St. Peter, etc., who had them all. So now, there are needed the gift of the enlightening and quickening Spirit. Those who seek and obtain this both see and hear the things of Christ, and Christ Himself.

III. The blessedness of true beholders and hearers.—Happiness arises upon the exercise of God-given faculties upon God-given objects. In Jesus Christ and His salvation we have the highest objects of the heart’s vision and hearing.

Illustration

‘A little child was playing on a headland over the sea. There was a blind sailor sitting on the cliff close by. The child gave the old man a telescope, and bade him sweep the far horizon and tell him with the glass what ships he saw. The poor old man could only turn sadly towards the child. The telescope was useless because his sight was gone. Even so it is with the things of Christ. Wonderful pictures are to be seen, but our eyes must be opened by God’s Spirit, or we shall see nothing.’