When God is silent . . .

 

Last week we discussed with friends how we handle arguments. One husband said that when he was upset, he used the silent treatment. No one needed an explanation. Perhaps this is one reason why we assume that when God is SILENT, not answering our prayers and not explaining why, that He is angry or  upset with us.

In the OT, there are several verses where God says be silent, not speak or protest or be anxious because He is at work. I suppose there are instances in many lives when God is speaking and the one who hears Him wants Him to stop because what He is saying is not what they wanted to hear. However, for the most part, in the hearts of His people is the plea, “Speak, Lord, for thy servant is listening.”

Job struggled with God’s silence. His ‘friends’ accused him of sin but he didn’t know of any sin that he had not confessed. He pleaded with God: “Teach me, and I will be silent; make me understand how I have gone astray . . . . How many are my iniquities and my sins? Make me know my transgression and my sin. Why do you hide your face and count me as your enemy?” Yet the Bible has no record that the Lord ever explained why Job suffered or why God was silent.

Job wasn’t the only one who experienced this silence. In Psalm 28:1–2, David says, “To you, O Lord, I call; my rock, be not deaf to me, lest, if you be silent to me, I become like those who go down to the pit. Hear the voice of my pleas for mercy, when I cry to you for help, when I lift up my hands toward your most holy sanctuary.”

In another place he cries out how the enemy is mistreating him and says, “You have seen, O Lord; be not silent! O Lord, be not far from me! Awake and rouse yourself for my vindication, for my cause, my God and my Lord!”

However, he says in Psalm 109:1–4, “Be not silent, O God of my praise! For wicked and deceitful mouths are opened against me, speaking against me with lying tongues. They encircle me with words of hate, and attack me without cause. In return for my love they accuse me, but I give myself to prayer.” His response to God’s silence was to keep praying. He knew that God heard him, even if He had not yet replied.

The pattern continued. Isaiah prayed, “Our holy and beautiful house, where our fathers praised you, has been burned by fire, and all our pleasant places have become ruins. Will you restrain yourself at these things, O Lord? Will you keep silent, and afflict us so terribly?” Habakkuk also prayed, “You who are of purer eyes than to see evil and cannot look at wrong, why do you idly look at traitors and remain silent when the wicked swallows up the man more righteous than he?”

God did answer these two prophets. He said to Isaiah, “I will not keep silent, but I will repay; I will indeed repay into their lap both your iniquities and your fathers’ iniquities together, says the Lord; because they made offerings on the mountains and insulted me on the hills, I will measure into their lap payment for their former deeds.” Also, Habakkuk eventually realized that God was using the wicked to chasten His people for their sin and He would eventually deal with them when they had served His purpose.

When the prophet Isaiah spoke of the suffering Messiah, he told of His silence before His accusers, “He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he opened not his mouth.” This also is a clue about silence. Is it possible that God says nothing because we sometimes accuse Him falsely?

In the NT, Jesus was accused of several things, but when it came to His identity, He was not silent:

Matthew 26:62–64. And the high priest stood up and said, “Have you no answer to make? What is it that these men testify against you?” But Jesus remained silent. And the high priest said to him, “I adjure you by the living God, tell us if you are the Christ, the Son of God.” Jesus said to him, “You have said so. But I tell you, from now on you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of Power and coming on the clouds of heaven.”

GAZE INTO HIS GLORY. It seems that the silence of God brings out responses that reveal what I understand about Him, true or false. He said to Habakkuk that “the righteous shall live by faith” — a response repeated in the NT. For me, this says that when God is silent, He has not changed and His promises to me have not changed. My response to His silence ought to reflect the truth I know about Him, rather than get antsy that He is upset or has turned His back on me, something He has promised will never happen. Far better to say, “I know You are still here and nothing can separate me from Your love” rather than worry He has abandoned me or does not love me any longer just because He isn’t saying anything.