Silent Nights

What do you do when God is silent? Jeff Henderson reminds us that when God isn’t speaking, it doesn’t mean He isn’t moving. When we look at the over 400 years of silence between Malachi and Matthew, we see how historical events during this stretch of time eventually led to aiding the spread of the Gospel, allowing us to trust that God is always active in our lives, even when we can’t hear Him.

Have you ever wondered what took place in the more than 400 years between the Old and the New Testament? It's easy to assume that God was silent in that one-page flip from Malachi to Matthew—a people left without guidance until the birth of their Savior. But that one-page flip signifies more than four generations of human life, and from all that we know about God, he may be silent, but that doesn't mean He is still.

In Malachi 1:2, the Lord says something very telling and foretelling, “I have loved you,” says the Lord. Malachi 1:2 NIV

This Hebrew translation means I have loved you. I do love you. I will love you. That won’t change.

As God promises to send His messenger who will prepare the Way, that the Lord will come to His temple in Malachi 3, the curtain begins to fall. Malachi finishes his book, the curtain drops, the Old Testament concludes, and God goes silent.

For 400 years...

There are no prophets.

No preachers.

No signs and wonders.

No Bible verses.

Over 400 years of Silent Nights.

Where did God go? What was God doing? Did He just get so frustrated with our sin and rebellion that He just walked away? Why the silence?

This is important from a historical and theological perspective, but it’s just as important from a personal standpoint.

Here’s why—you’ve had your share of Silent Nights, too. When we understand and see what God was doing in the 400 hundred years of silence between the Old Testament and New Testament, we will see a principle at play that will allow us to see what He is doing in our seasons of Silent Nights. Many of you are in a season of Silent Nights. And we’ve all been there. Where is God in the silence?

What can we leave you with today? This truth:

When you hear God’s silence, 

and you feel God’s absence, 

trust His presence.  

We know this is much easier to say than to live out, which is one of the many reasons why the Christmas story is full of hope and encouragement for all of us today.

God is near. God is with us.

His Name is Jesus.  

That being said, what was God doing in the Silence between the Old and New Testaments?

• Phillip of Macedon's son, Alexander the Great, conquered all the known world, which eventually caused him to become depressed because he famously said, “There are no more worlds to conquer.” Alexander the Great died at 33 from drinking himself to death. Before his death, he made a critical decision. He wanted the world he had conquered to have a common language. This allowed him to talk in a language everyone understood and could comprehend. That language was Koinonia Greek.
• God was in control. “The king’s heart is like a stream of water directed by the Lord; he guides it wherever he pleases.” Proverbs 21:1
• The language, Koinonia Greek, is what the New Testament was written in. As a result, many people understood, causing the message of Jesus to spread throughout the world.
• Many years later, another empire appeared on the world stage—the Roman Empire. Pax Romana—Roman Peace—was instilled, allowing people to travel without fear of violence. If someone attacked them, they were essentially attacking the Roman Empire. This significantly increased travel. They also created a state-of-the-art transportation system, which allowed faster, easier travel.
• Years later, a Roman citizen appeared—the Apostle Paul. He wrote over half of the New Testament in a shared language—Koinonia Greek. He leveraged Pax Romana, the Roman Peace, to aid his missionary journeys. One time, he was being beaten, and he said, in essence, “I didn’t think you could do that to a Roman citizen.”
• The fact that we even have a book in the Bible called Titus is an example of how Paul leveraged a common language, the peace of Rome, and their transportation system. Titus wasn’t Jewish. He was Greek. The odds of him ever hearing about Jesus, not to mention becoming a church planter in Crete, an improbable place to plant a church, is astronomical. But it happened in large part to how God had arranged the world stage between the Old Testament and the New Testament.

When God is silent, He is not still.

When you hear God’s silence and feel His absence, trust His presence.

So, how do we practically trust His presence?

• Get in His presence. Jesus said something very interesting about His presence: “Where two or more are gathered in my name..”  That doesn’t mean that we can’t spend 1-on-1 time with Jesus. But it just means there’s something powerful when we gather.
• Trusting God’s presence is not only an act of faith; it’s an act of worship.  Keep moving forward, and worship God as you do. When you have faced a season of disappointment, but by God’s grace and strength, you keep moving forward, that is an act of worship. And maybe as you do, you might even whisper this prayer, “Lord, it feels like you’re silent, and it sort of feels like you are absent, but I know you’re with me. You promised to always be with me. Today, I’m moving forward as an act of faith AND worship.”

All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: ‘The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel (which means ‘God with us’).

Matthew 1:22-23