Charles Spurgeon Commentary Matthew 10:27

"What I tell you in the darkness, speak ye in the light; and what ye hear in the ear, proclaim upon the house-tops." — Matthew 10:27 (ASV)

God is the great revealer, and you should imitate Him by publishing the truth to people. Go on, true believers, with your proper work, as mouths for God. Proclaim what your Master tells you. Receive a message from Himself in your quiet meditation and then make it known everywhere.

Hear it like a whisper in your ear and then sound it forth as the eastern town-crier, who gets to the highest point in the village and makes all the people hear from the housetops. Keep the study and the private room out of sight, and there in secret meet with Jesus. Then, set the pulpit of testimony in as conspicuous a place as you can find. If plunged in darkness of sickness, trouble, or distress, listen to Him whose voice is heard in the thick darkness, and then speak you in light the profitable lessons you have learned.

Lord, let no one of us speak until You speak to them, and then let them not be silent. May all Your disciples present to You their opened ears and then use in Your cause their fire-touched tongues!

What I tell you in darkness, that speak ye in light: and what ye hear in the ear, that preach ye upon the housetops.

There is a secret learning, but there must be a public teaching.

Christ takes us aside to reveal himself, that afterwards we may boldly go forth to others, and tell them what we have learned in private.

Oh, child of God, if you have a sweet morsel in your room by yourself, do not be so selfish as to keep it to yourself. Go and tell your brothers and sisters, your household, and your neighbors the things which you have learned.

If any of you have had a very choice experience, and a more than usual manifestation of divine love, be sure to let others be enriched with your riches.

Have you found honey? Do not eat it all yourself, but, like Samson, when he found it in the carcass of the lion, go to father, and mother, and friends with your hands full of the secret, and let them eat it also.

What I tell you in darkness, that speak ye in light: and what ye hear in the ear, that preach ye upon the housetops.

There must first be that quiet, lonely hearing—that calm, still sitting at the Master's feet to learn the lesson; and then afterwards must come the brave telling it out—speaking out though kings should hear, and never being silenced because of sinful shame.

What I tell you in darkness, that speak ye in light: and what ye hear in the ear, that preach ye upon the housetops.

This is what we are to preach—what Christ tells us—and this is how we are to obtain the content for our sermons: be alone with Christ, and let him talk to us in the darkness, in the quietness of the closet where we commune with him in prayer.

Then this is where we are to preach: upon the housetops. We cannot literally do this here in this land upon our slanting roofs; but, in the East, "the housetops" were the most public places in the city, and all of them flat, so that anyone proclaiming anything from the housetops would be sure of an audience, especially at certain times of the day.

Preach then, you servants of God, in the most public places of the land.

Wherever there are people to hear, let there be no lack of tongues to speak for God.