THE EPISTLE TO PERGAMOS: THE IMPORTANCE OF HAVING AN "EAR"
[p. 441] THE EPISTLE TO PERGAMOS: THE IMPORTANCE OF HAVING AN “EAR”
To know what it means to have an “ear” we must look at Jesus in His holy, lowly path here. He ever had an “ear”. He was ever attentive to the Father’s voice, to the word of God. The spirit of obedience is the practical expression of love (John 14: 21). It is striking that “ears hast thou prepared me” (Psalm 40: 6) should be translated by the Spirit into “thou hast prepared me a body” (Hebrews 10: 5). It shows that the characteristic member of man’s body viewed as in relation to God is his ear. We might think the hand or the foot or the eye were more important, but God values man’s ear.
One who has an ear does not shrink from the “two-edged sword” — the penetrating and dividing power of that sword lays bare secret sources of weakness and departure, and brings them under judgment before they carry the heart away — and this is welcomed by the one who desires to be influenced only by the Lord. There is no doubt that “the throne of Satan” is very much in evidence here; that is, his influence. But we have come under the influence of another throne, and the two-edged sword helps us in our allegiance to that throne by exposing to us all that in ourselves which would answer to Satan’s throne, so that we may judge it and thus be delivered from its power. All this is needful if we are to be like Antipas, a faithful witness, and to be morally, as he was indeed actually, in the fellowship of Christ’s death. This would preserve us from the ensnaring associations into which Balaam would seduce us, and we shall hate what Christ hates and thus be free from the Nicolaitanes. The reward to the overcomer is peculiarly sweet in Pergamos. The “hidden manna” and the “white stone” seem [p. 442] both to convey the idea of what is hidden from public view and known in secret with the Lord by the faithful soul. It is an intensely individual enjoyment of Christ and appropriation of Him in the secret soul history, and a proving of His sufficiency and grace in relation to one’s own personal exercises, which forms a special and peculiar link between each saint who has it and Christ, a confidential knowledge and intimacy with which no other intermeddles. And in the “white stone” there is a peculiar token of the Lord’s approbation — a distinction conferred by Him not for display but to be the cherished portion and joy in secret of the one who receives it.