The Deaf Man's Abominable Piety Text: Proverbs 28:9
Introduction: The Great Disconnect
We live in an age of staggering inconsistency. Our generation is one that wants to have its cake and eat it too, and then lecture the baker on the evils of gluten. Men want the blessings of liberty without the restraints of law. They want the fruits of a Christian moral order, like peace and prosperity, but they want to get there by tearing out the Christian root. They want to talk to God, to petition Him, to cry out to Him when things go sideways, but they do not want to listen to Him. This is the great spiritual disconnect of our time. It is a deep and profound hypocrisy, and it is a spiritual condition that God finds utterly revolting.
The modern evangelical landscape is not immune to this. Far from it. We have developed a therapeutic, sentimental piety that treats God like a cosmic vending machine or an celestial therapist. We approach Him with our shopping lists, our emotional needs, our desperate pleas. We want Him to hear us. But the prior question, the foundational question, is whether we are hearing Him. We want God to be our co-pilot, but we have thrown the flight manual out the window. We want His ear, but we have given Him our back.
The book of Proverbs is a book of applied wisdom. It does not float in the ethereal clouds of abstraction; it walks on the ground, in the dirt of our everyday lives. It connects our behavior to our theology with a brutal and refreshing honesty. And in our text for today, we are confronted with a principle that is as sharp and as clarifying as a splash of cold water to the face. It establishes an unbreakable link between our ears and our mouths, between our obedience and our prayers.
This proverb tells us that it is entirely possible to engage in the most sincere-feeling religious activity, to pour out our hearts in prayer, and to have God look upon the whole enterprise as a foul stench in His nostrils. It is possible for our prayers to be an abomination. And the condition that makes it so is a refusal to listen to what God has actually said.
The Text
He who turns away his ear from listening to the law,
Even his prayer is an abomination.
(Proverbs 28:9 LSB)
The Willful Deafness (v. 9a)
The first clause sets the scene. It describes a particular kind of person and a particular kind of posture.
"He who turns away his ear from listening to the law..." (Proverbs 28:9a)
Notice the action here. This is not a man who is hard of hearing. This is not someone who has never had the opportunity to hear. This is a deliberate act: "he who turns away his ear." It is a conscious, willful decision to ignore, to disregard, to set aside the revealed will of God. It is the posture of a man who puts his fingers in his ears and hums loudly when the Word of God is read. He might be a sophisticated academic who dismisses the law as culturally conditioned and outdated, or a libertine who finds its moral demands too restrictive for his lifestyle. He might be a pietist who believes he has graduated from the law to a higher plane of "just loving Jesus." The end result is the same. He has turned away.
And what is he turning from? "From listening to the law." In the context of Proverbs, "the law" (torah) is not just the Mosaic code, but the whole counsel of God's instruction. It is God's revealed wisdom for how to live in His world. It is the manufacturer's instructions for the human soul. To the faithful, this law is not a burden but a delight. It is sweeter than honey, a lamp to the feet and a light to the path (Psalm 119). But to the rebel, it is a fence to be climbed, a rule to be broken, a standard to be resented.
This turning of the ear is the essence of what the New Testament calls antinomianism, which literally means "anti-law." It is the spirit that says, "We are under grace, not law," and means by it that God's moral government has been suspended. It is a cheap grace, a licentious grace, that detaches God's favor from God's character. It wants the salvation of God without the salvation of God leading to the sanctification of God. This is a profound theological error. Grace does not abolish the law; it fulfills it in us. Grace does not give us a license to disobey the law; it gives us a new heart that desires to obey it from a position of love, not slavish fear.
The man who turns his ear from the law is a man who is fundamentally out of alignment with reality. He has decided he knows better than his Creator how he ought to live. He is his own god, his own lawgiver. And having established his own autonomy, he then has the audacity to approach the God whose authority he has just repudiated and ask for favors.
The Abominable Prayer (v. 9b)
The second clause delivers the shocking consequence of this willful deafness.
"...Even his prayer is an abomination." (Proverbs 28:9b LSB)
This is a strong word, "abomination." It is not that his prayer is ineffective, or misguided, or simply unheard. It is an abomination. The Hebrew word here is toebah. It refers to something that is disgusting, detestable, loathsome to God. It is the word used for idolatry, for sexual perversion, for dishonest scales. It describes something that is utterly incompatible with the holiness and character of God. God does not just ignore this prayer; He is repulsed by it.
Why? Because the prayer of a man who refuses to listen is the height of hypocrisy. It is a performance. He is attempting to use God. He wants God's power to serve his own disobedient will. He approaches the throne of grace as though it were a customer service desk, demanding a manager, all the while wearing a shirt that says, "Your rules don't apply to me." This is not communion; it is manipulation. It is not worship; it is insolence.
Imagine a son who utterly ignores his father's instructions. He sneaks out, wrecks the family car, insults his mother, and wastes his allowance on foolishness. Then, when he's in a jam, he calls his father, not with a repentant heart, but with a list of demands: "Dad, I need you to bail me out. I need more money. I need you to fix this mess I've made." What loving father would see that as a healthy relationship? It is a user's relationship. The son does not love the father; he loves what the father can do for him.
This is precisely the picture Proverbs 28:9 paints. God has given us His law for our good. It is the architecture of human flourishing. When we turn our ear from it, we are choosing brokenness, chaos, and sin. To then turn to God and ask Him to bless our broken, chaotic, sinful path is to ask Him to be a partner in our rebellion. It is to ask the Holy One to approve of our unholiness. And that, to God, is an abomination.
The Gospel Connection: From Deaf Ears to a New Heart
So, what is the remedy? Is it to simply try harder to listen? Is it to grit our teeth and force ourselves into a state of obedience so that God will finally hear our prayers? Not at all. That would be to trade the error of antinomianism for the error of legalism. Both are ditches on either side of the gospel road.
The problem described in this proverb is not a problem of insufficient effort. It is a problem of a rebellious heart. The ear is turned away because the heart is turned away. The natural man is at enmity with God; he is not subject to the law of God, nor indeed can he be (Romans 8:7). His ears are spiritually deaf by nature. So, the solution cannot be "un-turn your ear." The solution must be a new heart that produces a new ear.
This is precisely what the gospel accomplishes. The good news is not that God has lowered His standards, but that Christ has met them on our behalf. He lived a life of perfect hearing, perfect obedience to the law. His ear was always inclined to the Father. And on the cross, He took upon Himself the curse that our willful deafness deserved. He became an abomination for us, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.
And the result of this grace is not that we are now free to ignore the law. The result is regeneration. God, by His Spirit, performs a divine heart surgery. He takes out the heart of stone, the heart that is deaf and rebellious, and He gives us a heart of flesh (Ezekiel 36:26). He writes His law upon this new heart. The result is that we are given a new disposition. We are given a desire to hear. We are given a love for His instruction. Our obedience is no longer the grudging compliance of a slave trying to earn his keep, but the joyful response of a son who loves his father.
When this happens, our prayers are transformed. They are no longer the abominable petitions of a rebel trying to use God. They become the sweet communion of a child talking to his Father. Because our hearts are now aligned with His will, our prayers begin to align with His will. As John says, "And this is the confidence that we have toward him, that if we ask anything according to his will he hears us" (1 John 5:14). The one who delights in God's law will find that his prayers are increasingly shaped by that law, and therefore, increasingly answered.
So, the application for us is not to check our obedience-meter before we pray. The application is to flee to Christ. If you find in yourself a resentment toward God's law, a desire to turn your ear away, do not see it as a minor issue. See it for what it is: a symptom of a rebellious heart that makes your very religion an offense to God. Repent of your antinomian spirit. Ask God for the grace of a new heart, a heart that loves His law. When you have a heart that loves to listen, you will find that you have a Father in heaven who loves to hear.