Waiting

So I know we are taking a big jump

There are a lot in the minor prophets

But those are all going on most of them during the different kings here and there

And we could spend so much time in Old Testament and I love the Old Testament because it lays such a good foundation for our faith and shows us the character of God

But if we spent all of our time in the Old Testament we would miss out somethings in the New Testament

So we must come to an end

And one of the lasts thing in the Old Testament is the silence of God

As we have preached through the Old Testament we have seen a theme right

God says listen and obey me

Israelites say yes and then don’t follow through

They stop listening and following God

Something bad happens and then God steps in

God restores them and we start the same cycle over again

Malachi 4:5–6 NASB95

5 “Behold, I am going to send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and terrible day of the Lord. 6 “He will restore the hearts of the fathers to their children and the hearts of the children to their fathers, so that I will not come and smite the land with a curse.”

The very last words of the Old Testament

That God is going to send them the Prophet Elijah and He will restore hearts

From these words till Jesus shows up is about 400 years

God doesn’t send a prophet or anything

Like everything else we have read in the Old Testament there is a reason

Church the reason God is silent is because they had refused to listen to God

I also think it was part of Gods plan that the timing was important

But this is a people who had the prophets

Who had the word of God

And who had seen and done things that only came from God

And church they still for a lot of reasons refused to obey God

One of my commentaries says, “In short, the Jews were not honoring God.”

Essentially they had forgotten God and their covenants they had made with God

Numbers 15:38–40 NASB95

38 “Speak to the sons of Israel, and tell them that they shall make for themselves tassels on the corners of their garments throughout their generations, and that they shall put on the tassel of each corner a cord of blue. 39 “It shall be a tassel for you to look at and remember all the commandments of the Lord, so as to do them and not follow after your own heart and your own eyes, after which you played the harlot, 40 so that you may remember to do all My commandments and be holy to your God.

They were told to wear tassels

This wasn’t a fashion statement

This was a garment that was for a purpose of remembering God

For remembering who God was and what He has done

Most of us have things that we look at and remember about events, and people in our life

Maybe you have a picture in your house that reminds of a special event in your life

Maybe you collect memorable and that reminds you of a special or important time in your life

Maybe you have a book, or something you got from a special person in your life

maybe it was your parents or grandparents and you remember a special lesson they taught you

This tassel they were talking about is very similar

Only you were to remember the commands of God

You were to be able to look at it and remind yourself of the Law of God

Or of the statues of God

Or who God is

And yet they had slowly stop having them and stopped remembering who God was to the point they had completely forgotten God

For sometime God had tried to raise people up in the nations life to recall them back to God

And yet they had failed to follow after God

If we are honest with ourselves

We have those times when God is silent in our lives

And if we are asking God why are you silent

It may very well be that you have forgotten God

That you had slowly overtime started to focus so much on the world and the activities of the world that you have forgotten to spend time with Jesus

It’s not going to happen over night

It is going to slowly happening

Maybe you miss a day of time with Jesus and because you justify it you miss a week

Then a week turns into a month and a month turns into you don’t know where you Bible is

Maybe you have heard the story of the pastor and the spoon

A pastor had dinner at the home of a couple in his church. After he let, the wife said to the husband, “I think he stole our spoon!” This bothered her for a while. A year later the couple had the pastor for dinner again. Unable to resist, the wife asked, “Did you steal our spoon last year?” The pastor replied, “No I put it inside your Bible.”

Sometime we have so forgotten God that we don’t even know it

What the nation of Israel had done was forgotten God

They stopped looking at the tassels as a way to remember the things of God and started using those tassels as fancy and distinguing garments

We don’t wear tassels

But church

Psalm 119:9–11 NASB95

9 How can a young man keep his way pure? By keeping it according to Your word. 10 With all my heart I have sought You; Do not let me wander from Your commandments. 11 Your word I have treasured in my heart, That I may not sin against You.

we may not have tassels to remember the things of God

But we can write Gods word on our hearts to remember them

We can have scripture memory cards to remember them

We can highlight and underline our Bibles

We can write in our Bibles to remind ourselves of the things of God

We must be reading this

And church

Even when God is silent in your life

Or you think He is silent in your life

Like Revelations says we return to the things we did at first

We run back to the things we did when we first fell in love with Jesus

Which is spending reading Gods word

Praying, memorizing Gods word

We encourage and work wiht our kids to memorize scripture and then we do nothing as adults

We need to be doing the same thing

Church even when we think God is being silent

We are to return to the things we did at first

Search our the Lord and He will be found

God was only going to be silent for a period of time

They were only going to reject the Lord for a period of time

John 1:19–23 NASB95

19 This is the testimony of John, when the Jews sent to him priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, “Who are you?” 20 And he confessed and did not deny, but confessed, “I am not the Christ.” 21 They asked him, “What then? Are you Elijah?” And he said, “I am not.” “Are you the Prophet?” And he answered, “No.” 22 Then they said to him, “Who are you, so that we may give an answer to those who sent us? What do you say about yourself?” 23 He said, “I am a voice of one crying in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way of the Lord,’ as Isaiah the prophet said.”

God was only going to be silent for a period of time

Then He sent Elijah in John the Baptist to be a voice of reason and a voice of GOd saying turn back from the World

Repent and run to Jesus

John was a direction arrow pointing right to Jesus in a lost and dark world

That is exactly what we are to be doing

Pointing people to Jesus

Adrian Rodgers “On the donkey that carried Jesus: People hardly notice the donkey; they looked at Jesus. So they cheered for Christ and not the donkey. The preacher needs to be like the donkey, but what a privilege!”

Not just the preachers be a donkey

We know that Jesus came and died on the cross for your sin and my sin

To deal with the sin problem once and for all

That you and I would not have to deal with the sin problem in our lives

Jesus came and said I will pay your debt because you can’t

Please understand church that Jesus is only going to be gone for a while

John 14:2–4 NASB95

2 “In My Father’s house are many dwelling places; if it were not so, I would have told you; for I go to prepare a place for you. 3 “If I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself, that where I am, there you may be also. 4 “And you know the way where I am going.”

Jesus has gone and is currently constructing rooms of the people

Who have repented of their sin and trusted in Jesus

And church at some point Jesus is going to return

Just like the silence from the Old Testament to the New Testament

He was only going to be rejected and dishonored for so long and He brought Jesus

You only have so much time to repent of your sin and trust in Jesus before He is going to return

At some point Jesus is going to return and you need to be ready

So let me ask you are you ready for the return of Christ

Have you repented of your sin and trusted Jesus with you heart and life

If you have not in just a few moments you will have that opportunity

If you have are in you a silence

Do you need to repent and return to the things you did at first read your Bibles, pray, and memorize scirpture are just a few

We will call the band up and as they come up we invite you to repond obediently

Maybe you need to come and speak with someone about baptism

Maybe you need to spend time in prayer at the altar

we invite you to respond this morning

the alter is open

John being the light or the direction arrow because God was not going to be rejected for ever

Now understand that God is going to return He is only going to be away for so long and then He is coming back

Ensure you are prepared for Him to return because we are day closer

Gospel

Invitation