What do we do when God seems silent in our greatest times of need?

<p>What do we do when God seems silent in our greatest times of need?</p>

<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">BY-NC-ND 3.0 (US)</a> license.</p>

CORE Evangelism School

Dee Casper

The Silence of God

Father in heaven, thank you for this privilege to pray.

I thank you that you have a blessing for us this evening.

And I also thank you for the realization of the fact that I don't have a blessing for us this evening.

And So I pray that you would use me as your humble instrumentality to encourage your people, and that you would bless us, and that you would speak with clarity and power and conviction, and minister to the pain that lies in our hearts, for some of us who are wrestling right now even with the silence of God.

Like I said, you can check in there in the chat section.

So again, this evening's study is on the silence of God, what to do when God seems silent in the midst of our difficulties and our challenges in life.

So we're gonna cover the stories of 3 different people.

1 of them is a group, but 3 different sets of people.

The second 1 is Mary, Martha, and Lazarus, and the last is Jesus.

And just look at what the silence of God looked like in their experience and what we can learn from that whenever we ourselves go through the silence of God.

John the Baptist was given a powerful and important ministry of preparing the nation of Israel to receive Jesus, their long-looked-for Messiah.

And he was doing a work that was amazing, really.

I mean, just to kind of stir and awaken a nation that hadn't had a prophet for 400 years to receive the coming Messiah was a big deal, a really big deal.

And we're told in the Desire of Ages, a commentary on the life of Christ, that when John the Baptist preached, that Satan feared for the safety of his kingdom.

Now, would to God that that could be said of many preachers today, right?

But whenever he preached, Satan feared for the safety of his kingdom.

In John chapter 1 verse 29 when he sees Jesus, he declares before everyone, Behold the Lamb of God which takes away the sin of the world.

Triumphantly proclaiming that Jesus is indeed the Messiah that we've been looking for, that we've been waiting on.

But then whenever John baptizes Jesus, he's also witness to this powerful manifestation of the power of God, where when Jesus is baptized in the water and comes out of the water, first of all, he doesn't even feel worthy to do this.

He says, look, I need to be baptized by you.

And Jesus says, we have to do this to fulfill all righteousness.

And so John concedes, he consents, they baptize Jesus, Jesus comes out of the water, and the Holy Spirit descends upon Jesus in bodily form like a dove.

And the Word, or the voice of God even speaks and says, you are my Son in whom I am well pleased.

But John the Baptist wasn't just calling the nation as a whole to repentance.

He had to say some hard stuff to some important people.

And he rebukes Herod for taking his brother's wife, right?

And so he steals his brother's wife and John the Baptist, and he rebukes him for this.

Herod ends up throwing John in prison, right?

He throws John into prison and it's kind of a devastating really for John.

Being in prison stinks for 1, but 2 on top of this you end up finding yourself in a scenario in which you are locked in a dungeon right at the beginning and the explosion of Jesus's ministry on this earth.

I mean just think about it like you're in a scenario where your whole life call is to prepare the world to receive the Messiah And you're assuming that when that Messiah comes, you're going to be in the trenches doing ministry with this guy working right beside him.

You're going to see him take the throne of Israel.

And then right when Jesus's ministry is coronated as baptism, soon after you get thrown into prison?

Oh, it's terrible." And so he ends up in this scenario where it just doesn't look good.

Jesus is out getting it done and I can't be there.

And so he's locked in this lonely prison cell.

To make matters worse, word is getting to John about all the awesome and powerful stuff that Jesus is doing.

And he's thinking, wish I could see that, can't be there.

And what ends up happening is that he's getting a lot of reports about Jesus, but he's getting no visit from Jesus.

And this really weighs on John, and he's really wrestling with this.

And not only is he wrestling with it, but even his own disciples are wrestling with it.

And we're told, but they question, those disciples of John, why if this new teacher was the Messiah he did nothing to affect John's release.

How could he permit his faithful herald to be deprived of liberty and perhaps of life?

And these questions were not without effect.

Doubts which otherwise would never have arisen were suggested to John.

And Satan rejoiced to hear the words of these disciples, and to see how they bruised the soul of the Lord's messenger.

Satan trembles and fears for the safety of his kingdom when John preaches, but he delights and celebrates when John suffers.

And there can be times whenever you and I end up in situations where it's difficult, it's challenging, and the people that are in our life that you would assume would comfort and help us are actually kind of like the friends of Job, weren't really good friends at all, who basically their counsel is worth nothing, in fact, less than nothing.

And the feedback we get from people is just hurtful and not helpful.

And John the Baptist went through this, and as a righteous man, he can relate to you.

And so I can take consolation in that today.

That John, someone whom Jesus testified was the greatest of the prophets and spoke highly of, was a man who was beloved of God, also went through situations like this, just like you, just like me.

You're not alone, that's the 0, how often those who think themselves the friends of a good man and who are eager to show their fidelity to him, prove to be his most dangerous enemies.

How often, instead of strengthening his faith, their words depress and dishearten." Isn't that true?

John had experienced, He had expectations of Jesus' work that were not in harmony with the will of God.

John was looking for a Messiah to fit the mold that all of Israel was looking for.

Someone to take the throne in Israel and to advance the kingdom on earth.

Not understanding that God was advancing the kingdom of heaven on earth, not an earthly kingdom.

And this set John up to be disappointed and hurt because what he's expecting is to see Jesus do amazing things to shift the political landscape of the nation and that he's going to get to see it.

And when we place our expectations upon what happens in life, we get into being disappointed if our expectations are based upon what we think will happen and should happen as opposed to what God has said or longs to do.

And this led him to be disappointed and hurt as a result of that.

And many of us go through that very same thing that we set expectations on Jesus that are not in the will of God.

We ask him to do things for us that may not be in our best interest, but the ironic thing and kind of tragic thing is that then we end up getting upset at God for not doing what we thought he would do, not because he didn't do what he said he would do.

So it sets us up for even more disappointment and frustration and even distrust towards God that isn't healthy or good.

So to get upset with God for not doing something that he never promised to do doesn't really make a lot of sense, right?

We're not losers, right, for thinking such things or wrestling with such things, but we need to kind of reassess the way that we've kind of thought through some of these things.

But this also causes John to doubt the success of his own work, because the very people that he trained and was ministering to, those people are now wondering, is Jesus even really the Messiah we've been looking for?

Like John proclaims, behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.

And John's disciples think, well, I'm not so sure about that.

Because he's doing nothing for John and he should be.

And so this causes John to doubt the success of his work.

Shouldn't there have been better results if my own people are struggling?

All this is going through the mind of John as he is enduring the deafening silence of God.

And, but thankfully, John's faith in Christ did not fail and angels were sent to remind him of the hand of God in his life and of the powerful testimony of Christ's baptism.

And this helped to get John through this challenging and difficult season.

So he refused to express his doubts to his disciples and so he has an idea.

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The Silence of God

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