Is God Silent?

Matthew 5:13-16

Announcements

Youth Night April 4th

Summer camp sign ups

Next Sermon series starting next week is called Babylon

Have you ever gotten that feeling that you’re out of place or that you don’t quite belong? As we try to live lives that honor and glorify Jesus, we often run into roadblock after roadblock. We can sometimes even feel like we’re exiles living in a foreign land, similar to the Israelites in Babylon. The truth is, our world operates under entirely different motives than we do, and whether we like it or not, a part of being a follower of Jesus is learning to be an exile in a strange land. In a world with totally opposite rules and expectations, we have to learn what it means to live according to God’s Word and stand strong in our faith even when the world says it doesn’t make sense.

Optional Intro: Silent But Deadly

[Tip: If you want, prepare clips or images of famous ninjas from TV shows like GI Joe: Cobra, the 90s movie 3 Ninjas, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, or Ask a Ninja. As always, make sure any clips or images you show are appropriate for your students.]

Blue is Leonardo

Orange is Michaelangelo

Red is Raphael

Purple is Donatello

We all know that ninjas are pretty awesome. These fierce warriors are known as much for their ability to secretly and silently enter a room as for their skills in battle. As one ninja historian said, “Concerning ninja, they… went freely into enemy castles in secret. They observed hidden things, and were taken as being friends.” This skill of being silent allowed the ninjas to keep themselves secret until they accomplished the espionage or sabotage which they had been commissioned to do.

Silence is an important weapon for ninjas, but it’s not always the best tool. Being able to make noise is important in other areas of life as well. For example, imagine how many more auto accidents there would be if cars didn’t have horns and if trucks didn’t beep when they backed up. We aren’t ninjas, and that means that we don’t operate in silence.

Have you ever wondered if God operates in silence? Is He always like a ninja, accomplishing His objectives in a secretive way that people haven’t heard about or haven’t noticed? Does God speak to people to lead them, or is He outside of creation, leaving us to our own devices? In other words, is God speechless?

Today, we’re going to close our God Is Not series by looking at this question. We’ve already answered the questions of whether God is careless or clueless or useless by examining some statements from scripture of what God is not. Today, we’re going to try to discover if God is speechless by opening the Bible to one more God Is Notstatement. Instead of being ninjas, we’re going to talk about what Scripture says about the question of whether God is speechless. Let’s jump in.

Background

The Sermon on the Mount, which is found in Matthew 5-7, is the longest connected recording of Jesus’ teaching in the gospels. Throughout this sermon, Jesus told both close followers and simple observers alike what it meant to be a disciple of God. This sermon ranged from the people who would be blessed in God’s Kingdom to how disciples should approach sin and so many other topics in between.

In the part of this sermon that we’re focusing on today, Jesus talked about what the character of a disciple should be. And as He did, He gave insight on whether or not God is speechless in our world today.

Explanation

[Read Matthew 5:13–16 ““You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under people’s feet. “You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.”

As Jesus laid out the ethics of God’s kingdom, He came to the role that followers should take. He used two pictures to describe this role. First, He said that followers of God should be salt in the world. As The Message version says, “You’re here to be salt-seasoning that brings out the God-flavors of the earth.” (v. 13) In other words, followers of God are supposed to provide tastes of what God is doing in the world and of what God is really like.

Second, Jesus said that His followers should be light. “You’re here to be light, bringing out the God-colors in the world.” (v. 14) In other words, His followers are supposed to be spotlights that help others see what God is up to in our lives and our world.

Both of these metaphors were Jesus’ way of saying that we need to go public with our faith as disciples. Just as tasteless salt is useless, and just as invisible light is useless, a speechless disciple is useless. God is not speechless, but the world may think He is when His followers keep silent. Jesus taught here that disciples must play the role of being salt and light because, as Jesus said in verse 14, “God is not a secret to be kept.” We cannot be quiet about the things that God has done in our lives.

Optional Illustration: Hidden Treasure

While most of us use banks to save money, some older people who have heard tales of banks collapsing have taken matters into their own hands. They save their money by hiding it around the house in various locations or even burying it in the backyard. That strategy works, but if the person who hid all the money fails to tell family members that some money is hidden, problems can ensue.

This happened to a family in Israel in June 2009. A woman named Anat decided she wanted to surprise her mother, and so she discarded her mom’s old mattress and replaced it with a new one. But when her mother returned home, she said that she had hidden $1 million in the lining of the old mattress. Anat immediately went to get the mattress back out of the dumpster, but the trash had already been collected. So Anat started digging through landfills in search of the mattress, with no success. The million-dollar mattress was gone.

Anat threw away something of great price because she didn’t know about the valuable treasure. When we keep God a secret, the people around us can do much the same thing. They miss out on all that God has for them because they don’t know about Him. So instead of hiding the treasure, we need to live as though God is not a secret to be kept.

Application

Why do we keep secrets? Sometimes, it’s because we are ashamed of something. We’ve done something stupid or wrong or hurtful or different, and we don’t want anyone else to know. And sometimes, we keep secrets because we want to keep something for ourselves. Think of the secrets that best friends have that illustrate just how close their friendships are.

Neither of these are good reasons for followers of Christ to keep God a secret. We have no reason to be ashamed of God, but too many of us live as though we are. Maybe we keep God a secret because following God makes us feel so different from the rest of our friends or family. Maybe we keep God a secret because we don’t want to talk about Him publicly in a way that will keep us from being popular or accepted.

But we shouldn’t keep God a secret. On the contrary, we should be excited to tell others about what God has done in our lives and to celebrate publicly what God is doing in the world.

And keeping God a secret so that we have a closer relationship to Him than other people do is the epitome of selfishness. This is what Jonah did, and God went to extreme measures to correct him. We should seek to share what we know about God with others, not keep it to ourselves to make ourselves look smarter or more spiritual. God is not a secret to be kept.

God is not speechless. He spoke when He created the world, and He spoke when He sent His Son to enter the world. He speaks through His Holy Spirit who lives inside of all who have come to saving faith in Christ. And because God is a God who speaks, we can be sure that in some way, at some point, God is speaking to His children today. All around us.

The God who is not a secret to be kept came almost secretly, in a way that we didn’t expect, so that we can experience who He is and share the secret with others.

That means that Jesus doesn’t want us to be secret-keepers. Again, The Message translation of Scripture has a really beautiful way of describing this. Eugene Peterson, who authored The Message translation, says that God wants us to be “open houses” so that other people can discover what God is and what God is not. Isn’t that a great word picture? He taught us to be open houses so that other people can become disciples just as someone helped us become disciples once upon a time. This is the selfless way to live. “Keep open house; be generous with your lives. By opening up to others, you’ll prompt people to open up with God, this generous Father in heaven” (v. 16).

Optional Illustration: Family Secret

There was a time in our world when family secret could be kept forever. You’d hear stories about grandchildren raised as children to hide teenage pregnancies, adoptions that were never revealed, and all sorts of things people would rather keep quiet. But now, a $99 DNA test kit can end a family secret through the power of science and blood.

Nancy Harlow was forced by her father to give her baby up for adoption in 1951 and never saw her baby again. Until 2019, when Nancy Harlow’s son took a DNA test, and the results came back matching him with his six other siblings, plus another woman he’d never hear of in Indiana: Susan Collins Adams. Jim McCann, Harlow’s son, said, “It’s weird. One day you spit into a tube. The next day you have a new sister.”

Nancy Harlow and Susan Collins Adams are working to rebuild their relationship, but they can never reclaim the time they lost from 1951 to 2019. The family secret that kept them from each other almost managed to keep them apart for their entire lives, and even now, other members of their family are still coming to terms with their new sibling. 

In the same way, God wants us to take a page out of His book and speak truth into the world, no matter the cost. We will miss out on His blessings and way if we remain silent and keep Him a secret. He showed us how to speak the truth, and now He’s commissioned us to go into the world and share.

Closing                     

God is not a secret to be kept. So let us tell others of what God is – and what God is not. And as we do, let us let go of the burdens we have been carrying and see God as He truly is. Let us let go of the burden that tells us God is careless because we know that God is not ashamed to be our God.

Let us let go of the burden that tells us God is clueless because we know that God is not mocked.

Let us let go of the burden that tells us God is useless because we know that God is not a God of the dead.

Let us let go of the burden that tells us God is speechless because we know that God is not a secret to be kept.

Hey small group leaders! Tonight we will be in Matthew 5:13-16, asking the question, “Is God Silent?” Here are the small group questions for the night! Thank you all for all you do! 

1.     What is Jesus’ main point in this passage? Why do you think Jesus wanted to make sure His disciples got this point?

2.     What pictures did Jesus use in this passage? Why do you think Jesus picked these pictures?

3.     Why should we open up to others? What did Jesus say would happen when we do this?

4.     What are some of the reasons that we tend to keep God a secret? What causes us to do this?

5.     How does our decision to keep God a secret affect the people around us? How is the decision to keep God a secret a selfish decision?

6.     Why does God want us to be open? How is God open with us?