Difficult to understand, perhaps, is the sad reality that many may sit under the hearing of the true Gospel of Christ and yet never hear. Yet, should it surprise us, knowing the depravity and darkness of our own heart and rebellion of our will. Only the grace of God, revealing the LORD Jesus in the heart, does make that unbelieving heart to believe. All others, left to themselves will never believe, and therefore die in condemnation.

The Scriptures are replete with warnings as to how we hear the Word (Christ) preached, Mark 4:24. Physical ears alone do not suffice for hearing the Truth as it is in Christ. It takes spiritual ears, that only the Spirit of grace does give to every chosen, redeemed, and called out son of God. Proverbs 20:12 teaches us, “The hearing ear, and the seeing eye, the LORD hath made even both of them.” The apostle Paul declared, “For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” (2 Corinthians 4:6). When the LORD gives unbelieving sinners a hearing ear and seeing eye spiritually, it is every bit a work of creation as that of the creation of light in the world. Without this sovereign, creative work of the Spirit of God, none would believe, and all would pass before our eyes imperceptible. Hearing we would hear and not hear. Seeing we would see and not see. There is no greater condemnation than this. John 3:19, “And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.”

Many comment about how much unbelief there is out in the world. The Scriptures declare just how much there is in the heart of every individual. Startling it is that the Word of the writer to the Hebrews in writing of the condition of the heart of the hearers in the Old Testament economy is that their hearing was “not mixed with faith in them that heard the Gospel preached.” This is not addressing people out in the world, or attending assemblies where the order of the day is preaching up man, works, religion. Rather, those, like us reading this, who are accustomed to hearing the Gospel of the LORD Jesus faithfully set forth, week in and out, and yet NEVER be converted, or drawn to the LORD Jesus by the work of the Holy Spirit, through the faithful proclamation of the Gospel.

It was to such the preacher Stephen was led of the LORD to address the Word that cost him his life. When he had finished, there was no question in the hearers’ minds that the Word he preached accused them of being like those in the Old Testament who opposed Moses, Acts 7:37-39. Moses in addressing the church in the wilderness pointed them away from himself to One like him that the Father would raise up from among them, and exhorted them to HEAR HIM. Yet, the answer they gave was one of violent rejection of such a Savior and a desire to return to their state of subjection to hard labor and slavery, “to whom our fathers would not obey, but thrust him from them, and in their hearts turned back again into Egypt.”