Blind eyes and deaf ears.
I. ALL MEN HAVE ORGANS FOR PERCEIVING SPIRITUAL TRUTH. These blind Jews have eyes and the deaf have ears. Neither class is deformed or mutilated in respect of their organs of sense. Here is the paradox, the surprising situation. It is men with eyes and ears who are blind and deaf. It is no wonder that the lower animals should live without man's religion in a life of brutish appetite. But it is surprising that beings endowed with higher faculties should degrade themselves to such a life. That this is the case with the most hardened and ignorant may be proved by the experience of life.
1. The most brutalized sinner was once a child. Then he had the child's wondering, open-eyed vision of truth.
2. The most degraded have been restored. Then the faculty of spiritual perception has been reawakened. This proves that it was only dormant, not absent.
3. Even in a condition of indifference a degraded, deadened soul may be aroused. The bow drawn at a venture may send an arrow into a joint of the armour of worldly thought and find the natural sensitiveness beneath.
II. SOME MEN HAVE LOST THE POWER. OF PERCEIVING SPIRITUAL TRUTH. Their eyes are blind and their ears deaf. This does not mean merely that they have not the gifts Joel referred to (Joel 2:28). It means that they do not perceive the truth which is declared to them by the messengers of God.
1. The words spoken are not heeded. They are mere sound. Immediately they are spoken in the ear a rush of unsympathetic thoughts sweeps them away. It is like sowing by the wayside. The seed is trampled underfoot.
2. If the words are attended to, the personal significance of them is not grasped. They are mere ideas unrealized. They are not felt to have any relation to life. Thus a biblical scholar may be blind to the truth of God.
III. THIS STATE OF SPIRITUAL BLINDNESS AND DEAFNESS IS CAUSED BY SIN. The people are "a rebellious house," and therefore they cannot perceive the Divine message. We have come upon one of the worst consequences of sin. It deadens the soul against its own guilt and against the messages from God to the sinner. This is very different from intellectual dulness. The will of God is so revealed that "the wayfaring man, though a fool, may not err therein." Indeed, mere intellectual acumen does very little in helping us to perceive spiritual and moral truth. God has hidden from the "wise and prudent" what he has revealed to "babes and sucklings." The preaching of the cross of Christ is foolishness to many of the world's wise men (1 Corinthians 1:18, 1 Corinthians 1:19), because they have not spiritual sympathy with it (1 Corinthians 2:14). Note the blinding and deafening which are sometimes ascribed to God (e.g. Isaiah 6:9, Isaiah 6:10)—because it is the abuse of God's action that leads to such a condition, and because it is a condition of Divine judgment—are here brought back to man's guilt.
IV. GOD DOES NOT NEGLECT THE BLIND AND DEAF. Their state is one of guilt—for they brought it on themselves—and also one of danger. But they are not left alone in it. Ezekiel is to proceed to more simple and striking action, in order to extort attention from the indifferent. We must shake the sleeper when his house is on fire. We want more rousing preaching. God has pity on the blind and deaf, and it is according to his mercy that every effort should be made to reach them. Christ gives new sight and hearing (Luke 4:18).