Now if you thought about the statement, "The entrance of thy word giveth light..." in the natural, wouldn't you think the entrance of God's Word would bring sound? But according to this scripture it doesn't. It brings light. It causes a person to see.
What you HEAR is what you SEE. Words paint pictures.
In Mark 4:23 the Lord Jesus told the people of His day, "If and man have ears to hear, let him hear." It sounds to me like some people who have ears still don't hear—that a lot of people are deaf, or just don't really listen. They tune out. That is certainly true.
Then in verse 24 we read: "And he said unto them, Take heed what ye hear: with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you: and unto you that hear shall more be given." Take heed what ye hear.... Notice that this is a command.
It's Up To You
Usually the understood subject of an imperative sentence like this is the pronoun you: "You take heed what you hear." This means that the responsibility is upon YOU to take heed [about] what YOU hear.
In other words, you can control the content of what goes into your mind. That means that you have the freedom, the duty, and the power either to accept or to reject what comes into your realm of consciousness. That means you can tune it out if it is not edifying.
Now this will tell you why God is dealing so strongly today with things like gossip. What is wrong with gossip? It is a perversion of the basic law of hearing. It is receiving the negative, the bad, and the evil side of any situation.
And once a person starts to do that, he begins to plant the seeds of his own destruction.
That's why God is against gossip. Because it is harmful. Not just to the injured party, the person who is talked about, but also to the hearer, the one who receives the negative message into his ear and mind and heart.
That is why the Bible teaches us to let our nay be nay and our yea be yea (Matt. 5:37).
The Lord is telling us to guard our spirits: Don't confuse your spirit. Don't operate the law to your own detriment. Because what you hear is what you will see. And what you see is what you will get. Take heed how you hear!
The computer world has a term: GIGO. It means, "Garbage In, Garbage Out." In other words, what you put into the computer system is precisely what you will get out of it.
Be Careful What You Allow In
There is a lot of garbage in this world. And it is not all confined to the secular world. Some of it is passed off on us as being "Christian." There are things in the media which disguise themselves as "Christian" but are not that at all. Yet most believers don't seem to be able, or care enough, to examine them for what they really are.
Just because something is aired on a Christian radio or television station does not necessarily mean that you and I should listen to it. Certainly not day in and day out.
We need to be more selective, more discriminative about what we allow into our ears. Because what goes in our ears goes into our minds and hearts. It becomes part of us.
As Christians, it is our responsibility to observe this divine law and make it work for us rather than become a curse against us.
Unless you determine in your heart to take heed to what you hear, it won't be done. Because there is no one else who can do it for you. No one else is responsible for you but you.
Excerpt permission granted by Harrison House Publishers