Itching Ears

“For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths.” 2 Timothy 4:3-4

A.W. Tozer describes the preaching at the first church he attended after his conversion to Christ. The man that was preaching did not speak within the authority of Christ. In other words, he spoke from a human, sentimental and philosophical agnosticism:

“I remember he preached one Sunday about a harp, using the subject, ‘A Harp of a Thousand Strings.’ He didn’t say much, but he said it beautifully, and it ended up like this, ‘So I am sure that the soul of a man is the harp of a thousand strings.’

I went home—and didn’t hear any harp. I didn’t hear any authority” (A.W. Tozer).

What was missing, Tozer explains, is the authority of Christ in the pulpit.

Matthew 7:27-28 says:

“When Jesus had finished saying these things, the crowds were amazed at his teaching, because he taught as one who had authority, and not as their teachers of the law.”

Much of what passes as Christianity lacks the authority of Christ and His anointing via the Spirit of God.

Obviously, this lack of Biblical preaching of the Gospel of Jesus Christ did not become a stumbling block for A.W. Tozer. I sincerely praise God for that, and for guarding all believers who experienced the same style of milk toast leadership and teaching in the churches we either grew up in or ignorantly attended in our early days of being a Christian, not knowing any better.

And while self-serving, philosophically intellectual, Hallmark card and Reader’s Digest style preachers—and the congregations who gobble up their fictions and musings—seem harmless enough, they are actually the wolves in sheep’s clothing described in Matthew 7:15:

“Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves.”

And then,

“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles? Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’” Matthew 7:21-23

Jesus explains what it means to know Him:

“Jesus answered, ‘I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you really know me, you will know my Father as well” (John 14:6-7a).

Many preachers stand at the helm of a physical building and group of people called a corporate church. They may even quote Scripture as part of the liturgy and ecclesiastical tradition.

Banners decorated with doves of peace adorn the walls, and the preacher, wearing the vestment, dramatically intonates as he or she reads and speaks.

The choir sings ancient hymns and the sun streams through stained glass depictions of St. Paul, or Jesus sitting among the lambs with the children.

It’s all so spiritual and pious.

And yet many of them don’t know God because they don’t know Jesus Christ.

Without the inward submission to the Gospel—heart, mind, intellect, body, soul and spirit, wherein “the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His great mercy has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead” (1 Peter 1:3 in part), it is a foundation built on sinking sand (Matthew 7:24-29).

“He saved us, not on the basis of deeds which we have done in righteousness, but according to His mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit” (Titus 3:5).

“In the exercise of His will He brought us forth by the word of truth” (James 1:18a).

It is by the Word of Truth—not the anecdotes and prosaic witticisms of a winsome humanist “pastor,” or a women’s liberation advocate, or a universalist troubadour—that one comes to be in the presence of, and ultimately know, God through Jesus Christ the Lord.

I have met and come to know many people who will uncomfortably say they believe in God (but don’t want to talk about it) and yet will never mention the name of Jesus Christ or admit to belief in Him.

John 3:6 explains this:

“That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.”

“But a natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually appraised” (1 Corinthians 2:14).

Just because a building looks like a church, feels like a church and sounds like a church, doesn’t mean it is a church: not the church of the Triune God of Father, Son and Spirit, anyway.

The platitudes and sound of stringed instruments, the interpretive dancing, the “children’s church”—all of it, if it originates from man, to man, is nothing. It is “a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal” (1 Corinthians 13:1).

It will look and sound like love: undefined, generic love that we are led to believe is the best kind.

But what does 1 Corinthians 13 say? This passage is all about love, as is most of Scripture. It says, in a way, the same thing that Matthew 7, quoted above, says. It says that this kind of generic love does not have the authority of Christ: Christ is not the source of it nor is He in this love at all.

What does Jesus say about love?

"A new command I give you:...As I have loved you, so you must love one another" (John 13:34a, b, emphasis mine).

“If you love Me, you will keep my commandments” (John 14:15).

Note that in the very next line after this, in Jesus’ own words, He tells us how we are to keep His commandments (which essentially is the keeping of the Gospel, the New Covenant. We do not get rid of the Old Testament Ten Commandments; we approach them now from the position of being in an even greater covenant, the New Covenant of Christ).

The very next line that Jesus says is this:

“I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may be with you forever; that is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it does not see Him or know Him, but you know Him because He abides with you and will be in you” (John 14:16-17).

Why then do some people fall under the spell of authors and leaders and pastors and priests who do not know God (but often act and speak as if they do, but without the authority of Jesus Christ), while others, even though exposed to these false teachers, do not succumb to their influence?

I believe the answer can be found, going back again to Matthew 7, in the words of Jesus when he says,

“Ask, and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened. Or what man is there among you who, when his son asks for a loaf, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, he will not give him a snake, will he? If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give what is good to those who ask Him!” John 7:7-11.

Those who have itching ears persist in those ears because they don’t ask and seek after God through Jesus Christ. And they don’t ask and seek after God through Jesus Christ because they don’t want to.

I believe every person has moments where they begin to want to, but the parable of the seed kicks in and their inclination to Christ gets snatched by the evil one, or dies because it has no place to take root, or falls away when the going gets tough, or is choked out by worries of the world or by wealth and prosperity (Matthew 13:18-230..

It is in the one who perseveres in the thirst for Christ that the seed grows and flourishes. As this seed grows and flourishes, the Word is understood and bears fruit, and the seeking person does not become hoodwinked by deceivers (read Matthew 13:18-23 in its entirety).

If evil, worries, intellect, giving in to temptations, greed, idolatry of wealth and status can all kill the seed in a person, then desiring to hear the Word, understand it and bear fruit in it can, in turn, grow it.

As Jesus said, “Seek and you will find.”

And to a true seeker of God in Christ Jesus, only His Truth, in His Authority, will satisfy.

copyright Barb Harwood

“O Timothy, guard what has been entrusted to you, avoiding worldly and empty chatter and the opposing arguments of what is falsely called knowledge—which some have professed and thus gone astray from the faith.” 1 Timothy 6:20-21