The Season of Silence

Introduction

The coming of Jesus is a remarkable story.

Next week we are going to uncover the uniqueness of the birth of Jesus.

But in order to fully understand the miracle of what took place in a stable over 2,000 years ago, we have to know what happened right before Jesus came.

The book of Matthew is the beginning of the NT. Therefore, Malachi is the book that closes the OT.

The book of Malachi presents a series of disputes between God and the nation of Israel...

They struggle to believe God is just and loving and God is frustrated by their sin seen in their idolatry and divorce...

The book ends in an interesting way…

Malachi 4:2 ESV

2 But for you who fear my name, the sun of righteousness shall rise with healing in its wings. You shall go out leaping like calves from the stall.

Malachi 4:4–6 ESV

4 “Remember the law of my servant Moses, the statutes and rules that I commanded him at Horeb for all Israel. 5 “Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and awesome day of the Lord comes. 6 And he will turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the hearts of children to their fathers, lest I come and strike the land with a decree of utter destruction.”

Here, we see God declaring a day when a new prophet will come and make all things right...

Consider verse 4, that they stay tied to the scriptures in hopes that one day they would be freed and all would be right...

Now the nation of Israel interpreted this for centuries that this would be a political remedy, that the Lord would restore their nation to greatness and all would be well.... We know that was not necessarily the case.

But there begs a question that leads us to our discussion tonight...

What happened between the time God declared what was to come, and the coming of His Son, Jesus?

400 years of silence.

We hate silence. Our culture, full of noise at every turn, claims that noise is sufficient for all things.

When someone is silenced, it is a horrible thing.

When I silence my phone, people assume I no longer care about them or our relationship.

The cry of Jesus as an infant in the manger is greatly personified as the greatest provision of all time because it follows this silence.

I want to venture out and say this- If you are like me, human, you have struggled with silence. It brings about confusion.

You can imagine what the Israelites felt after a few hundred years had passed and God had not verbally communicated to them...

Maybe you are there.

Maybe you are in a spot in your spiritual walk where you are walking through the motions, yet you lack motivation.

Maybe you are coming to church and leaving feeling the same way you arrived.

Maybe it has been a while since you felt the Spirit of God convict your soul and reveal something transformational to you.

You want what you have experienced before, but it seems out of reach...

In just a little bit, we are going to sit in silence before we sing a song together… As soon as we finish that song, Austin and I want to help you in the midst of your confusion and your season of silence.

What we will do is put my cell number up on the screen and you will have the ability to text in questions about your faith.

You can ask ANYTHING.

Your name will remain anonymous. Tonight, my goal is that we leave reminded of the God that we serve, that He is perfect, He cannot sin, and therefore He cannot sin against us. He is for us.

Even when we struggle to see it.

Let me close this introduction with this verse.

Isaiah 41:13 ESV

13 For I, the Lord your God, hold your right hand; it is I who say to you, “Fear not, I am the one who helps you.”