By Ken Yates
INTRODUCTION
There are many sayings about the importance of keeping your mouth shut and your ears open. For example, we have all been told that we were given two ears and one mouth for a reason. We should spend a lot more time listening than speaking.
The older we get, the more we understand the wisdom of such sayings. But we can take that too far. We may get the impression from such pearls of wisdom that we should always keep our mouths shut.
If we want to please the Lord, we certainly need to listen. But there are also times when we need to talk.
In the Gospel of Luke, the Lord instructs us to use our mouths as well as our ears.
LISTENING TO THE LORD
Luke 10:38-42 records a time when the Lord visited the home of Martha and Mary. Martha was busy cooking and cleaning. Her sister was busy doing something different. She was using her ears.
Jesus was teaching. Luke says that Mary “sat at Jesus’ feet and heard His word.” She was listening. It pleased the Lord. When Martha complained that Mary was only listening and not helping, Jesus praised Mary. He told Martha that Mary had chosen the best course of action.
It is what we would expect. Mary was putting her ears to work. She wasn’t using her mouth. She understood that she had a lot to learn from the Lord. It was a time to use the two ears the Lord had given her.
WHAT DID MARY HEAR?
As Mary sat at the Lord’s feet, what did He talk about? What was He teaching her? Luke doesn’t say, but I am pretty sure I know.
Mary was a believer. She didn’t need to know how an unbeliever would receive eternal life by faith in Christ alone for that gift. She already had eternal life. She needed to know how she should live now that she was a believer. She needed to be taught discipleship truths. That is what the Lord gave her.
A significant theme of Christ’s teaching was the coming kingdom of God (Luke 4:43). All believers will live in that kingdom. Faithful believers—those who are disciples—will be great in that kingdom. They will be greatly rewarded when Christ begins His reign. I do not doubt that Jesus was telling Mary and the other believers in that house how they could please Him and receive His approval when He evaluated their lives.
Jesus was the greatest Teacher who ever lived. He was telling Mary of marvelous things. She could receive eternal rewards and rule with the King forever. She was soaking it in. I picture her with her mouth closed. Her ears were working overtime. It was a time to listen, not speak.
SPEAKING TO THE LORD
Sometime after the Lord praised Mary for listening,i He told His disciples (including us!) about the importance of talking. Luke 11:1 says that Jesus was praying. Upon the completion of His prayer, an unnamed disciple asked Him to teach them all how to pray.
Luke says that He told them, “When you pray, say…” Both praying and saying involve speaking.
What follows Jesus’ command that the disciple use his mouth is Luke’s version of the Lord’s Prayer (Luke 11:2-4). As many have pointed out, it is more accurate to refer to it as the “Disciple’s Prayer.” It is what the disciple should say when he approaches the Lord in prayer.
WHAT ARE WE TO SAY?
When the Lord tells us to use our mouths, what does He want us to say? Even though most believers can recite the Lord’s (Disciple’s!) Prayer, many have not studied it in detail. I would suggest that it deals with things a disciple should do. These are likely the things Mary had heard the Lord speak of when He taught in her house. They are the kinds of things that will make a disciple great in Christ’s kingdom. After listening, Mary and Jesus’ other disciples were to speak to the Lord about these things.
The believer should pray that God’s name “[be] hallowed.” That is not a common term in modern English. The basic meaning is “to be sanctified.” The leading Greek lexicon/dictionary says it means “to honor” it. The disciple should ask the Lord to cause His name to be honored. Our heavenly Father is holy. When the believer lives a holy—or sanctified—life, he honors the Holy One who gave him a new birth from above (John 3:3; Jas 1:1718). Simply put, the disciple should ask that he live a sanctified life so his Father will be glorified and His name hallowed (Matt 5:16).
When the disciple talks with His Father, he should also ask that the kingdom come quickly. On that day, His will “will be done” on this earth in the same way that it currently is in heaven. This would likely have been a significant topic of Christ’s teaching in Mary’s home. It is a major topic of NT teaching. The disciple should ask that the Lord’s glorious kingdom come soon. Christ will share that glory with those who are faithful to Him (Rom 8:17; 2 Tim 2:12). Implied in this request is the disciple’s desire to be counted among that group and to be rewarded by the King (Matt 6:13).
The disciple should then ask the Lord to provide for his daily needs. This is a recognition that he can do nothing without the Lord. The disciple is entirely dependent upon the Lord, both in his physical life and his spiritual growth. We cannot please Him without His strength. We cannot produce any spiritual fruit in our own power (John 15:6).
Mary, no doubt, wondered about the sin that was in her life. It is present in the life of every believer. The Lord told His disciples that when praying, they should ask for forgiveness of their sins. This involves confessing those sins (1 John 1:9), which entails speaking. The Lord will forgive those sins, and the disciple will continue to have communion with Him.
Finally, Jesus told the disciples to ask the Lord to keep them from the temptations that Satan brings. The evil one wants the disciple to fail. He wants them not to have communion with the Father or to honor Him. He does not want them to be rewarded in Christ’s kingdom. The disciple should talk with the Lord and ask Him not to allow that to happen. This acknowledges that sin is always a danger in the life of the believer.
The Lord told His disciples to say all these things. We don’t just need our ears. We need our mouths.
CONCLUSION
After believing in Jesus for eternal life, the believer’s most incredible privilege is the opportunity to be His disciple. A disciple follows in Christ’s footsteps and desires to be more and more like Him (Luke 6:40; 2 Cor 3:18).
If we want to be disciples, we will need to use our ears. We need to listen to what He says in His Word. That is what Mary did, and it pleased the Lord.
But we also need to use our mouths. After we hear what the Lord desires us to hear, we need to go to Him and use our mouths to talk about those things. As we speak to Him in prayer, we should ask Him to make us the kind of disciple who honors Him.
There is a time to listen to God and a time to speak to Him. May we use our ears and our mouths.
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Ken Yates is a retired Army chaplain (Lt. Col). He has many theological degrees, including a Ph.D. from D.T.S. in New Testament. He leads the GES international ministry, cohosts the daily podcast, and assists Bob in all aspects of the GES ministry. His new book, Mark: Lessons in Discipleship, is a wonderful explanation of Christ’s call to discipleship. He and his wife, Pam, live in Columbia, SC.
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i Editor’s note: There is no indication of the length of time between the end of chapter 10 and beginning of chapter 11, and the location is different. Mary was listening to Jesus, and Martha was serving Him, in their house (Luke 10:38). Chapter 11 occurred “in a certain place.” Reiling and Swellengrebel comment, “‘and it happened’, cp. on 1:8. No indications as to time and place are given beyond en topō tini ‘in a certain place’” (A Handbook on the Gospel of Luke, p. 428). However, many commentators point out that Luke has put these accounts back-to-back to illustrate the need for disciples both to listen to God (and His Word) and to pray to Him. For example, Valdés comments, “The narrative transitions from listening to Jesus (cf. 10:38–42) to speaking to God the Father” (“Luke” in The Grace New Testament Commentary, p. 282).
