Like Jesus: Being With Jesus - Silence

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——————— Introduction

How much do you value silence? If we are honest, I’d say most of us do not actually value silence. We desire it from time to time, especially those of us living in noisy households with kids yelling and screaming, but I don’t think we actually value it.

Most of us turn on the noise of this world. This world has noise. It has lots of noise. You can find noise everywhere, even outside the city in the country, you can find lots of noise and I’m not talking just about the chicken noises. Yes, they are noisy, but there is also our televisions, some of us never actually turn them off because…we like the noise.

Or perhaps it’s your airpods or your bluetooth speakers or just your iphone with your favorite spotify playlist going. We have them on, because…we like the noise.

And if we are honest, we like the noise, because God likes noise too. He created us with ears to hear and mouths to speak. In fact, if you think about it, he could have created the whole world without saying a word, yet he chose to SPEAK it into existence. God certainly seems to be fond of noise as well. He created music and the heavenly beings surrounding his throne constantly shouting, Holy Holy Holy are proof that God likes noise.

God likes silence as well. You may not understand this or maybe it’s hard to reconcile the love of noise and the love of silence, but God likes both. In Ecclesiates 3, God says in his word, that there is a time to speak and a time to keep silent. In other words, he loves both in their proper places.

Today, we are continuing our series called Like Jesus and we want to build off of what we talked about last week, which was about solitude. God wants us to have a devotional life, meaning we need to take time to be with him alone. That’s an important part of our Christian walk.

Today we are going to look at this idea of silence. When we are alone with God, God wants us to be silent before him. Oh he loves for us to talk to him, but he also loves for us to be silent before Him. So today we are going to look at this very important part of our Christian walk.

Main point - God wants us to seek times of solitude and silence before Him.

Turn with me to the book of Mark.

Mark 1:35 ESV

And rising very early in the morning, while it was still dark, he departed and went out to a desolate place, and there he prayed.

Here in the very beginning of the book of Mark, we have the very beginning of Jesus’ ministry. Jesus gets baptized and the Holy Spirit comes upon Him and immediately drives him out into the wilderness for 40 days. In other words, Jesus ministry starts with prayer and fasting and fighting the devil.

If you want to follow him, just keep those things in mind. Your life should be marked by those things. You should pray, fast and fight the devil. And probably in that order as well.

As we seek to be like Jesus and study this passage further, you see that in Mark 1, Jesus begins his ministry with preaching on the kingdom, then he calls his first disciples and then he heals multiple people and cast out many demons.

It was a busy first day. He worked late into the evening healing people and exorcizing demons. You would think that after a day like that, he might want to sleep in, but that’s not what Jesus does. This is where we pick up our text.

It says that Jesus rose early in the morning, while it was still dark, he departed and went into the desolate place and prayed.

Now there’s a couple of interesting things we want to look at here. First, it was early in the morning, still dark. Most commentators estimate that it was around 4 am when Jesus rose and withdrew from everyone to get some time alone with God.

You know, even though I live in the middle of Suburbia, I can tell you at 4 am, things are quiet at my house. Even my kids are quiet at 4 am…usually. I’m sure if Jesus wanted to find some silence, this was the time of the day to do it.

Second, Jesus left and traveled into a desolate place. Now the Greek word for desolate here is “eremos” which is the same word we see translated earlier in Mark as wilderness. John the baptist preformed his ministry in the wilderness. It was away from the crowds of the city.

Jesus was also driven by the Spirit into the eremos, the wilderness, the desolate place, to be tempted by the devil. The wilderness is the place where you will meet with God. A few years back, we were studying the book of Exodus. God met with his people in the wilderness of Mount Sinai.

The wilderness is where you meet with God. We know that this isn’t the only place you can meet with a God who is omnipresent, but this may be one of the primary places where we can meet with Him. This is where Israel had met with God, now Jesus is meeting with God in the same place.

Now, this is not only true of the Israelites and Jesus, but Moses had met with God prior to this, the burning bush moment, where was that? In the wilderness. Elijah the prophet, also met with God, where? In the wilderness. Why does God meet with people in the wilderness? Because that’s where you find silence. In fact, let’s look at Elijah’s story really quick to emphasize this point.

We are picking up this story in 1st Kings 19, and Elijah the prophet of God has had a major showdown with the prophets of Baal. He has an amazing victory over them and it angers Jezebel, who threatens to kill him. So Elijah escapes to the wilderness and we will pick up the story with verse 9.

1 Kings 19:9–12 ESV

There he came to a cave and lodged in it. And behold, the word of the Lord came to him, and he said to him, “What are you doing here, Elijah?” He said, “I have been very jealous for the Lord, the God of hosts. For the people of Israel have forsaken your covenant, thrown down your altars, and killed your prophets with the sword, and I, even I only, am left, and they seek my life, to take it away.” And he said, “Go out and stand on the mount before the Lord.” And behold, the Lord passed by, and a great and strong wind tore the mountains and broke in pieces the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind. And after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. And after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire the sound of a low whisper.

So Elijah is meeting with God and we get this series of events, wind, earthquake and fire. These are some of the ways that God had spoken to his people in the past. The children of Israel at the foot of Mount Sinai in the earthquakes. Moses and the burning bush through the fire. But here we see that God is not speaking in those ways. He’s speaking to Elijah the way he speaks to many of us. He speaks to him in a still, small voice, as the KJV puts it. Or the sound of a low whisper, as the ESV says.

Neither of these translations really convey what the original language is saying though. Both of these imply that Elijah heard something with his ears. That is not the case. The Hebrew meaning of this phrase is “a thin silence.” God spoke to Elijah in the voice of silence.

God Speaks With A Voice Of Thin Silence. I believe that one of the main ways that God speaks to his people is in the silence. Yes, He will use donkeys, earthquakes, fires, all of nature, other people and most certainly his written word, but silence is one of the primary ways that God speaks to people, even today.

In this passage, it describes his voice as a thin silence, or a fragile silence. That means its a silence that you have to be careful to hear. This is a silence that can be easily broken. We talked at length last week about eliminating distractions in our quiet time. If we are going to get alone with God, we need a place of silence.

We need to value silence, in our culture, we do not value silence, we value the noise. Like I said earlier, we like the noise. Noise means busyness. Noise means activity. But these are not places where we meet with God. Activity and Busyness may be places that we do for God, but they are not places that we meet with God.

Listen to Tozer on silence…

Very few of us know the secret of bathing our souls in silence. It was a secret our Lord Jesus Christ knew very well. There were times when He had to send the multitudes away so He could retire alone into the silence of the mountainside. There He would turn the God-ward side of His soul toward heaven and for a long time expose Himself to the face of His Father in heaven.…

My eyes and ears and spirit are aware of the immaturities in the so-called evangelicalism of our time. The more noise we make, the more we advertise, the more bells we jingle, the happier we seem to be. All of the signs of immaturity are among us.

We are seeing a general abhorrence of being alone, of being silent before the Lord. We shrink from allowing our souls to be bathed in the healing silences.

Men Who Met God, 103, 104.

A. W. Tozer

As usual Tozer nails it. We hate being silent and alone before the Lord. And I believe part of the reason why is because of what happens in silence. There are certain things that happen in silence that you can’t get elsewhere and so we are going to look at what happens in silence. I’ve got about four things I want to look at quickly today.

What happens in the silence?

We Are Filled By His Spirit

First things first, we aren’t new agers, we aren’t trying to empty ourselves out. The Bible never tells us to do that. This is common new age practices that have infiltrated what God has said to do like meditate and pray. But emptying ourselves is not something we are called to do.

We are actually filling ourselves with God and his Spirit, which is what we are commanded to do in his letter to the Ephesians.

Ephesians 5:18 ESV

And do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit,

So we aren’t emptying ourselves, but rather the opposite. We are filling ourselves with the Holy Spirit. When we get alone in the silence, we are inviting the Holy Spirit to fill us and take control over us. We can’t do this in the noise and hustle and bustle of this life. We have to slow down and be intentional about this. Silence is a great place for our cups to be filled. Silence is the place that Jesus used to to fill up his cup as well.

If you are filling empty, that may be the biggest sign to you that you need to introduce some times of solitude and silence into your schedule and ask God to fill you up.

We Hear Our Hearts

When we get into a place of silence, the first thing you will notice is how loud your heart actually is. At least for me, when I get into a quiet place, all of a sudden, it gets really loud. My mind is racing. I’ve got lots of things that will come into my mind as soon as I find some silence.

First off, this is normal. If you feel like I’m describing you, rest assured, this is everyone. Whenever you get into a place of silence, that is the language of your heart. It’s going to speak. It’s going to pour forth the things that you have been too busy to notice. This is completely normal. God designed us this way.

Its in silence that we give our hearts the chance to speak. Now, we don’t follow our hearts, but we can use them like a thermometer, they will tell us something. Our heart gives us a clue into what is going on in our inner man. It’s like a thermometer, it’s telling us the temperature of our souls. Are we hot, are we cold, are we lukewarm? What’s going on in there?

Our Sin Is Exposed

What we will find at first is that our hearts will expose our sin to us. The moment I get into silence, I have to deal with the sin in my life. This is one of the reasons we avoid it. We don’t want to sit before the Lord in silence, because its in those moments that our heart feels compelled to confess.

Our sins are laid bare before the Lord. If we stay busy, we can ignore our sins. If we keep the noise going, our sins are muffled and we can’t hear them, much less repent of them. But this is precisely where God wants to take us. He wants us in silence before him (Habakkuk 2:20 “But the Lord is in his holy temple; let all the earth keep silence before him.” )

So the first thing you will notice is your heart will start pouring forth like a confession. Your mind will be racing to thoughts that are not godly. These are things that you will need to confess to the Lord and repent of.

For myself, when I’ve been in places of silence recently, I’ve had these thoughts of grandeur. I’m going to do this great thing for the Lord. I’m going to accomplish this mighty deed. And it’s in these moments, that I am discerning my heart and having to repent of such thoughts. I can do none of these things. Anything that I accomplish is only for his glory and is empowered by Him. I find my pride in the silence.

What will you find? Any number of things. You could experience what some people call intrusive thoughts. Thoughts that are not your own. Remember, Jesus went into silence and battled the devil. You might have some demons of your own to battle. God will help you, if you ask. Silence is a place to get your heart pure before the Lord.

Solitude and silence help to maintain purity.

John Climacus

If we are regularly meeting with the Lord and allowing Him to expose our hearts and sin, guess what? We will notice that purity is more present in our lives. Purity, pureness of heart is developed by spending time with the one who has a perfect heart and by reflecting what we see in that place.

We Hear From The Lord

I won’t be able to spend a lot of time on this today, but just know this. God wants to speak to you in the silent places. We believe in a God that speaks, not an idol, not some deaf, dumb, mute piece of wood or dead god that other religions worship. We believe God is alive and speaking.

If you will get into a place of silence, like Elijah you might hear the voice of the thin silence speaking to you. When this has happened to me, these have been life-changing moments. Some of you know what this is like. But when God speaks to you, your life changes. And he longs for you to find a silent place to speak to you.

We are silent in the early hours of each day, because God is supposed to have the first word, and we are silent before going to sleep, because to God also belongs the last word.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Conclusion

To conclude, I want to give you the gift of silence today. I’ve spoken a lot, but God has something he wants to speak to your heart today. I’m going to have the prayer points on the screen and you can pray or journal through those, but mainly I want to give you some time to just be silent.

Prayer Points

Father, what are you wanting to say to me today?

Jesus, what things in my heart need to be repented of?