Hearing Is Not Listening
John 18:37b - Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice.
Josh McDowell has been telling his story publicly for more than sixty years. He grew up on a Michigan farm with a father who drank and was violent. Beginning when Josh was about six, a man hired to work on the farm abused him. At nine he finally worked up the nerve to tell his mother. She didn’t believe him. He told the truth, and the person who should have listened didn’t.
Years later he was a college student who thought Christianity was worthless. He met a group of Christians whose lives bothered him, and they challenged him to look into the claims of Jesus. He took the challenge intending to prove them wrong. The evidence changed his mind, but that wasn’t the end of it. Even though his mind was convinced, his pride and his will were still digging in. It took a while longer, but in December of 1959, he finally trusted Christ. McDowell had the truth well before he was willing to listen to it.
Now read the sentence Pilate heard from a few feet away: “Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice.” He says they listen. And Pilate heard every syllable. He was closer to Jesus than anyone in Jerusalem that morning. He even answered, with a question of his own, and then he stepped back outside before anything could reach him.
Out in that courtyard stood men shaped by Israel's Scriptures and Israel's feasts, who knew how to talk about God better than most people alive, and they were handing over the One those Scriptures had been pointing at the whole time. So, information was never the dividing line in that courtyard. Allegiance was.
Eight chapters earlier Jesus had said nearly the same thing. Whoever is of God hears the words of God. And in chapter 10 He finishes the thought. My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. That’s what listening means here. Receiving what Jesus says as true and then putting yourself under it. What you do with His voice shows where you belong.
Look at some of the people in John's Gospel who actually listened to Jesus. A Samaritan woman let Him tell her the truth about her own life, and then left her water jar sitting there and ran back to get her town. A man born blind obeyed Him before he could see a thing, held his ground when they pressured him, and ended up worshiping. Different people with different histories. They heard. They received it. They went with Him.
Jesus doesn’t say His sheep understand everything. He says He knows them, and they know the sound, and they go where He goes. Follow Jesus today, friends.
Head: Listening means receiving what He says and going where He sends me.
Heart: Ask God to make you hungrier for the truth than protective of yourself.
Hands: Name the one thing Jesus has already made clear, and stop asking for more direction until you’ve acted on it.
Prayer: “Father, thank You that my Shepherd knows me by name. Forgive me for asking for more while sitting on what You have already said. Make me quick to hear and empower me to obey Your voice today. In Jesus' name, Amen.”
-PK