HEARING WHAT YOU DON'T WANT TO HEAR

Acts 7:57-58a

"At this they covered their ears and, yelling at the top of their voices, they all rushed at him, dragged him out of the city and began to stone him."

When I was a boy, from time to time my older sister and I would have an argument. She would usually end it by putting her fingers in her ears and saying, "nah, nah, nah, nah, nah." Try it sometime. You'll find you cannot hear what the other person is saying. In our passage today, that is what the Jewish leaders are doing -- covering their ears and yelling at the top of their voices. They didn't want to hear anymore of what Stephen had to say.

Have you ever felt that way before? Have you ever felt you've had enough of Scripture, church or preaching? Not long ago I was talking with a young family man, who told me he just didn't like going to church anymore. He felt all that was preached about was giving -- the church just wanted his money. We went to church together shortly after we had this conversation, and following church he said to me fully vindicated, "See what I mean!" You see he heard what he needed to hear and nothing else. Notice I said, "What he needed to hear." No one else heard a sermon on giving; only he did because that is what he needed to hear. Giving was his heart issue -- generosity -- not just to the church but to everyone, including his wife and children.

So what should we do when we read Scripture or hear a message that makes us want to cover our ears and yell at the top of our voice to block it out? We have to first be careful to not follow the normal human reaction to information we don't want to hear -- and that is illustrated in our passage today -- "they dragged him out of the city and began to stone him." Rather than stoning, a modern day example might be in the young family man's case: stop going to church, or change churches. In other words, if you remove the person (the pastor/Stephen) and the words (sermon/Scripture), then the issue is removed.

pocketpower.org