When God Seems Silent:
We must remember that God is always concerned about us,
even when He appears to be silent.
Here now is Gene Getz:
I'm sure that all of us have experienced times in our lives when we sense
or feel that God is silent.
And that's a very difficult time, particularly
when we believe that we're walking in the will of God.
And you see this happened to the children of Israel.
And that's part of the theme that comes from
this particular psalm: God's silence.
Notice Psalm 44, verses 4 and then
verse 9. "You are my King, my God,
who ordains victories
for Jacob." And by the way, when you see that opening phrase,
"who ordains victories for Jacob," it's really
pointing to the fact that they are acknowledging
that God is sovereign. That He is a sovereign God.
And you'll see that when they go on to explain and express their frustration.
"But You have rejected
and humiliated us;" ... Now they're being very honest with God.
... "You do not march out with our armies."
In other words, their evaluation of God's presence,
which doesn't refer to His silence. In other words, He's
obvious. He is speaking. He is directing. He is
helping them to have victories over their enemies.
And what they're saying here is, Your silent because
we’re being defeated. And You're rejecting us.
Now notice in
the next verse, verses 17 and 18. What made this
really frustrating. We read:
"All this has happened to us, but we have not forgotten You or betrayed Your covenant."
In other words, Lord,
you promised that if we obeyed You
that You would not forsake us. And so they are reminding God
that He is not active in helping them, at this moment, to be victorious over their
enemies. And they go on to justify their
request--or really their exhortation to God--by saying:
"Our hearts have not turned back; our steps have not strayed
from Your path." And they continue to express themselves in this psalm
with their frustrations. Notice verses 22 to 24:
"Because of You we are slain
all day long; we are counted
as sheep to be slaughtered." Now I just want you to
remember that concept because it's very, very important
in understanding something in the New Testament.
Let me read it again: "Because of You
[God] we are slain all day long; we are counted
as sheep to be slaughtered. Wake up, LORD!
Why are You sleeping? Get up! Don't reject us forever!
Why do You hide Yourself and forget our affliction
and [our] oppression?"
Now they're being very honest with God because they believe that He's being silent.
The fact of the matter is they have a false view of God.
First of all, when they say, "Wake up, LORD!"
When they say, "Why are
You sleeping?" The fact is in
Psalm 121:4, we read
that Israel, the God of Israel,
"the Protector of Israel does not
slumber or sleep." And they're saying, God wake up!
And you know, that is reminiscent of what happened
on Mount Carmel when the prophets of Baal
were dancing around the altar and slashing themselves and crying out.
And Elijah says, hey,
cry a little bit louder because maybe Baal has gone on a journey.
Or he said, maybe he's asleep.
See that is the element of Baal
theology that's even in their statement here. Even though
they say we're obeying Your commands, they don't have a correct view of God.
Because God never sleeps. God never
slumbers. He may seem to be silent
but He is present. So they had a false view of God.
But they were expressing their feelings. Job, by the way,
had a totally different view in the midst of his suffering.
When he felt God forsook him.
Because he said, "Though He slay me, yet I will trust Him."
And you don't see that perspective here.
Now the fact of the matter is that they felt God
was silent. But He wasn't.
Now here's the point that I made earlier, to think about
the one statement or concept in this psalm.
Because Paul, in the book Romans,
refers to this in chapter 8. And he quotes this psalm.
Notice Romans 8:35 to 36. He raises a question.
"Who can separate us from the love of Christ?"
Then he raisers a second question.
"Can affliction or anguish or persecution or famine
or nakedness or danger or sword?"
And then to make his point in terms of answering those questions,
he actually quotes from the psalm that we've just read. And here it is:
"Because of You [God]
we are being put to death all day long; we are counted
as sheep to be slaughted." This is pretty much a quote
right from the complaints of Israel to God because they felt He was
silent. That He was asleep. That He had forsaken them.
Now Paul helps us to understand
this concept in relationship to God's sovereignty.
Because what he's referring to here is
many devoted Christians-- and Paul became one of these
who was persecuted and actually martyred for the cause of Christ.
And what he is saying is, is God silent
when we're persecuted? Or even martyred for the cause of Christ?
He said, absolutely not!
Because he answers the questions if you go to verse 37:
No. "No, in all these things we are more than victorious
through Him [that is Jesus] who
loved us." The One who died for us.
And that rose again from the dead.
We are victorious in Christ, regardless, whether by life
or by death. God
is not silent. And here you have that
intricate mystery
of the sovereignty of God. That God is in control.
But the mysterious part of this is that God is not the author of evil.
He allows it. He allows it because
He obviously allows evil people
to do evil things. And He's not responsible
for their evil decisions. Such as taking the life of Paul himself,
who was martyred for the cause of Jesus Christ. But ultimately,
God is sovereign. And how we put that all together
is something that we won't understand until we're with the Lord. And probably
spend eternity trying to
understand it. Or coming to understand it. Because the interesting thing is, here in
this Old Testament psalm,
as well as here in the quotation.
He's actually--the authors of the psalm
and Paul himself are addressing God. "You."
You, God. You, God. Which is acknowledging His sovereignty. But Paul is giving this
New Testament perspective.
That regardless--and he puts it together beautifully in Romans 8:28.
Another mystery: "We know
that all things work together for good
to those who love the Lord." And that includes evil.
Now how to figure that out. How to understand that. How to comprehend that
is a mystery beyond any ability that we have
to explain it. But the fact is, it is true.
And so here we have a very
interesting psalm that deals with frustration
in relationship to this principle. So let me read that principle
for you and then I'm going to share an application question. Let's just get that
principle in front of us again:
We must remember that God is always concerned about us,
even when He appears to be silent.
Now here's the application question:
Why is it so difficult to handle periods in our lives when we cry out to God
and He seems to respond with silence?
Well that's normal. That is natural.
It's very difficult to handle any situation
in life that involves health issues, for example,
illness, tragedies, tensions in relationships.
Those are all difficult situations. But when we're in those situations. And we
are crying out to God.
And He seems to be silent.
It even makes it more difficult for us. But the fact is,
He still cares. You see, one of the things we also do,
and that is we have false expectations
of what it means for God to be active in our lives.
The fascinating thing is that when you look
at the periods of time when God
overtly demonstrated His presence.
His power, through His presence.
It isn't too many years in the view of all
of biblical history. For example,
there are basically three major periods. There's a period
of Egypt and the signs, the miracles, the plagues,
the Red Sea, the mountain, fire,
smoke, God speaking, heard His voice,
gave the Ten Commandments. You have that period.
Plus, as the children of Israel wandered in the wilderness for 40 years.
And God revealed His presence in the sense that their shoes never wore out,
they always had something to eat, their clothes never wore out.
And then they went into Canaan and God revealed Himself through the power. His power
in conquering Canaan. But that's a relatively short period of time,
historically speaking. You don't see
that kind of thing happening again until the time of Elijah and Elisha
on Mount Carmel and the miracles
with the prophets of Baal. And you see all of this
happening. Elijah and Elisha were both prophets that worked incredible miracles.
And God was manifesting Himself
through that. But as you move through the rest to the Old Testament,
many times God seemed to be silent. He was not
revealing Himself in that way. Until
the coming of Jesus Christ and that great miracle
of the incarnation. And the miracles that Jesus worked
to demonstrate He was the Son of God. The power He gave to the apostles.
And then once again we see a phasing out,
as it were, of that incredible, dynamic
revelation with miracles. And the fact is,
God has appeared to be silent, generally speaking,
for nearly two thousand years.
Because He came and revealed Himself and gave us the Word of God.
It doesn't mean He's not active and that He isn't working miracles in certain situations.
But generally speaking, we're not living in the time of Elijah and Elisha.
Or Moses on Mount Sinai . We're not living during that time
of Jesus and the apostles and all those dramatic events.
The fact is, you calculate those miraculous periods,
maybe 150 years out of all
biblical history.
See, the point I'mr making is we can have wrong expectations
of what it really means for God to be present
with us. And when we rely
on that overt manifestation, we can become very
disillusioned. But God, as
Dr. Francis Schaeffer stated in a book, God
is here and He is not silent. God is speaking.
And He is not silent. So, let's remember
this principle to live by:
We must remember that God is always concerned about us, even
when He appears to be silent.