What You Think You Already Know

"But blessed are your eyes because they see, and your ears because they hear." - Matthew 13:16

A song you've heard a hundred times can suddenly sound like you've never heard it. Same melody, same words, but it reaches a place it couldn't before. Fresh hearing works like that. The music was always playing. We just hadn't tuned in yet. Jesus said as much.

His disciples had been hearing him teach day after day. He told them they were blessed, not because they knew more, but because they were actually taking in a reality most people walked right past. Just being able to receive it was the whole gift. He compared that to good soil, someone who hears and understands, and that kind of hearing produces an unexpected harvest, a hundred, sixty, thirty times what was sown (Matthew 13:23).

Then there's Nazareth. Jesus went home, and the people who'd known him longest wouldn't receive him. They'd watched him grow up, knew his family. So when he taught, they couldn't get past the labels they'd already given him. Carpenter's son. Mary's kid. They thought they had him figured out. That was the problem. He did not do many miracles there (Matthew 13:57-58). Familiarity had subtly hardened the soil. What if the greatest barrier to what God wants to do isn't our weakness or our mess, but that we think the sermons we've heard, the answers we've settled on, and the God we think we've figured out are the whole story?

Familiarity is an old pattern, but it doesn't have to be the last word. Generations later, Paul told a crowd that God was doing something they wouldn't believe even if someone explained it (Acts 13:41). Some wouldn't hear it. They'd already decided what God sounded like. But others heard it for the first time, believed, and were filled with joy (Acts 13:48, 52). That kind of joy does more than lift our spirits. It's the first sign the soil is soft again. And soft soil receives things hard ground never could.

When the soil softens, rebuilding begins. Jerusalem's walls had been destroyed. When rebuilding finally started, the high priest went first and set a door in place (Nehemiah 3:1). Not a wall. A door. Built to open. The writer of Hebrews calls Jesus our high priest and forerunner, the one who goes ahead to open the way (Hebrews 6:20). He sets the door in place and knocks (Revelation 3:20). All we have to do is open it, which can be as simple as sitting down with a verse we're overly familiar with and saying, "Show me what I've missed."

When we let go of what we think we know, something opens up. The same Bible, the same God, the same story, reaching places it couldn't before. And what grows there is more than we'd ever thought to ask for. That's the gift.

Prayer

Father, we want to hear You fresh today. Where we've stopped listening, draw us back in. Where we've settled, show us more. We're listening. Amen.