18/02/2024
Why Is God Silent During Our Darkest Hours?
God is most silent during the hardest times in our lives. So it seems anyway. And so it must have seemed for Israel. From the time Jacob left for Egypt (Gen. 46:1ff) until the time God spoke to Moses in the burning bush (Exodus 3), there is no record of a divine revelation or direct speech from Yahweh. It was the longest period of divine silence in the OT.
Yet these 400 years were some of the hardest years of Israel's history. When they suffered most, God was most silent.
And yet he wasn't truly silent. He had given them his word, first to Abraham (Gen. 15:13-16) and then to Jacob (Gen. 46:1-4), that he would be with them in exile, would bring them up again to freedom after they had suffered. He was teaching them to live by faith in the word he had spoken before their suffering.
He wanted his people to rely not on new revelations but on old promises.
This is a lesson for us. When we are going through hard times, we often cry out, "God, just tell me what to do! Just speak to me! Why are you silent?" In that silence, however, God is pointing you to the word and promise he has already spoken in his Scriptures.
He is silent but not silent, for he has given us his Word made flesh, Jesus Christ, and his written word, which cannot lie. And in Christ, and in his Scriptures, we have the sure promise that he will never leave or forsake us, that even in our sufferings he is as close as the breath in our lungs and the blood in our veins.
When we walk through the valley of the shadow of death, he walks with us. Our Jesus, our Emmanuel, our God-with-us.
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