Dr. Rodney Plunket

Nick Hill was a senior Marine intelligence analyst in the 90’s during the Persian Gulf War.  He served on the amphibious ship USS Nassau.  The ship received letters addressed “To Any Service Member.”  Nick had not taken any of those letters because he enjoyed recurring back-and-forth correspondence between his wife and two daughters and occasionally wrote notes to his daughter’s classroom as well.  He regularly worked 12-16 hour days and did not feel that he had time to respond to any more letters.  But one day he altered his practice and picked up three of those letters addressed “To Any Service Member.”  He decided that he could find time to mail the senders a short thank-you note.  Over the next week or so, he responded to the letters one at a time.  When he came to the last one, he felt a pang of homesickness because it had a Colorado postmark, where his family was.  He had missed spending Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s with them; he was very lonesome for them.

Listen to the rest of the story in Nick’s own words:

I opened the card and started to read the letter enclosed.  About the third or fourth sentence down, it read, “My Daddy is a Marine over there, if you see him tell him hi and I love and miss him.”  This statement really touched me and made me miss my family even more.  I looked down to the signature - and sat in stunned silence as tears filled my eyes.

My own daughter Chris had signed the letter.

Periods of silence attended by tears are powerful times indeed.  We find such times in Scripture, and it is upon such times that we will focus this morning.

This morning’s lesson is the third in our series on responses to God.  Two Sundays ago we looked together at awe as a fundamental response to God.  Last Sunday we looked at obedience.  This morning we will look together at the response of silence.

I hope all of you are spending time studying and reflecting upon the pas­sages listed in each week’s Ancient Words/Open Hearts Bible Study Schedule.  (Be sure to notice the change in your Bible Study Schedule for this week.  That change is on page 2 of your worship handout).  If you did that this past week, then you read Psalm 1; Lamentations 3:25-30; Amos 5:1-24; Habakkuk 2:20 (which was read as part of our Scripture reading this morning); Zephaniah 1; Zechariah 2:13; and Revelation 8:1.

In the Christian classic, The Little Flowers of Saint Francis, there is this great line:  “Just as an evil idleness is a way to go to hell, so a holy idleness and quiet are a way to go to Heaven.”[1]  This morning we want to focus upon the “holy idleness and quiet” that comprise that “way to go to heaven.”

Let’s begin with the first passage in the Ancient Words/Open Hearts list.  Please look with me at Psalm 4:

Answer me when I call, O God of my right!

          You gave me room when I was in distress.

          Be gracious to me, and hear my prayer.

How long, you people, shall my honor suffer shame?

          How long will you love vain words, and seek after lies?

But know that the Lord has set apart the faithful for himself;

                    the Lord hears when I call to him.

When you are disturbed, do not sin;

          ponder it on your beds, and be silent.

Offer right sacrifices,

          and put your trust in the Lord.

There are many who say, “O that we might see some good!

          Let the light of your face shine on us, O Lord!”

You have put gladness in my heart

          more than when their grain and wine abound.

I will both lie down and sleep in peace;

          for you alone, O Lord, make me lie down in safety.

As with any written text, there is more than one way to view the contents of this psalm.  The German Theologian, Artur Weiser, describes my understanding when he writes that this psalm “enables us to get an insight into the struggle of a man who, rejoicing in his faith, contends with his friends who are disheartened and discontented because they are passing through difficult times.”[2]  I would only add to Weiser’s words, for clarity’s sake, that the psalmist appears to be passing through these difficult times with his friends.  In other words, it does not appear that the psalmist is sitting back in a state of ease and telling his friends how to respond to the tough times; it seems instead that the psalmist is in the midst of that suffering with the friends and is counseling them from within their shared circum­stance.

Look at an important element of the psalmist’s counsel.  In verse (v) 4 we read, “When you are disturbed, do not sin; ponder it on your beds, and be silent.”  The Old Testament commentator, J. Clinton McCann Jr., suggests that in this verse the psalmist is exhorting “the faithful to stand firm in their identity and not be led into temptation by their opponents.”[3]

What I want us to hear is this psalmist telling us to be calm, quiet, and trusting even in the midst of a time of trouble and distress.  I want us to be able to do what the psalmist, in the final verse of this psalm, says:  “I will both lie down and sleep in peace; for you alone, O Lord, make me lie down in safety.”

One of the responses to the reality of God in our lives is silence and calm in the midst of difficulty and even chaos.  We can do that because of who our God is, because of the power and love of our God.

And now please look with me at the second passage in our Ancient Words/Open Hearts Bible Study Schedule for this week, Lamentations 3:25-30:

The Lord is good to those who wait for him,

          to the soul that seeks him.

It is good that one should wait quietly

          for the salvation of the Lord.

It is good for one to bear

          the yoke in youth,

to sit alone in silence

          when the Lord has imposed it,

to put one’s mouth to the dust

          (there may yet be hope),

to give one’s cheek to the smiter,

          and be filled with insults.

This writer is dealing with the destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians in about 586 BC.  The writer is reeling from the incredible pain of that loss.  His counsel to himself and others as he processes what has happened is to wait for the Lord, to wait quietly for the Lord’s salvation, and “to sit alone in silence.”  It is clear that the writer is still struggling with what has happened and why.  In such a circumstance it is so easy to spew out words of bitter anger and faithlessness.  It is so easy to destroy faith at the very time that people need it so desperately.  The writer’s words could not be more insightful.  When you are in that state, be silent, wait for the Lord, and be confident that “[t]he Lord is good to those who wait for him, to the soul that seeks him.”

Another passage for this week was Habakkuk 2:20, which with the two verses immediately preceding it served as our Scripture reading this morning.  Habakkuk 2:18-20 contrasts idols with the living God.  I think that the commentator, Ralph L. Smith, has well captured the force of these three verses:

The prophet asks:  What use is an idol?  It has no power.  It is man-made.  Idols are instruments of lies and deception.  Many people think idols are something that they are not.  An idol is as silent as the stone out of which it is made.  It cannot teach or give directions.  It may look expensive but it is not alive.

In contrast to the idol, Yahweh is in his holy temple, let all the earth bow in hushed silence before him.  So all of the forces that oppose God will ultimately be silenced.  Now the forces of evil still rage.  The righteous is still faithful.  The battle continues.  Yet there is a power in the world “greater than armies, bombs, bribery, and torture, and it is he who thwarts the efforts of the wicked and gives to the righteous another kind of power to enable them to resist and endure.”

Habakkuk is living in a time of great upheaval and chaos.  The source of much of that is the Babylonian empire.  That empire looks to the power of idols.  As a result, it will fall.  It looked so permanent at the time, but it will fall.  It will fall because God will, in God’s time, bring its evil upon its own head.  But the prophet had to sit and wait; the prophet had to be silent in trusting faith, knowing that “[t]he Lord is his holy temple.”  That is, the Lord is in charge.  The evil in the world will be dealt with in the Lord’s time and in the Lord’s way.

These passages call upon us all to respond to the God in whom we trust by having attitudes of quiet and faithful trust in the midst of distress and chaos.  May we be able to be calm and confident knowing that the salvation of our God will come in God’s way and in God’s time.

Is anyone in America today completely free of stress and anxiety?  Is anyone’s life fully absent of chaos?  I doubt it.

We want to have a time of silence now.  We want to have a time when we can allow quietness and trust in God to take away stress, anxiety, fear, and our desire to resolve problems out of our own power.  You will know that this time of silence is coming to an end when the praise team begins singing the song, “Dear Lord and Father of Mankind.”  You do not have to straighten up though when that song begins.  Just begin to bring your thoughts, prayers, meditations, and reflections to an end as that verse is being sung.  Then we will all join together for one more verse of that song.  So now, you can bow your head and even go to your knees as you seek to be silent before the Lord.  Take the Lord your anxiety and your stress.  You might even want to reflect on these words from Psalm 46:8-11, a portion of which we will keep on the screen throughout this time:

Come, behold the works of the Lord;

          see what desolations he has brought on the earth.

He makes wars cease to the end of the earth;

          he breaks the bow, and shatters the spear;

          he burns the shields with fire.

“Be still, and know that I am God!

          I am exalted among the nations,

          I am exalted in the earth.”

The Lord of hosts is with us;

          the God of Jacob is our refuge.

Let’s be silent before the Lord!

Now we have time look at only two more of the passages in the Bible study schedule for this week.  Amos 5:1-24 was on your list.  Let’s look now at just four verses from that reading, Amos 5:10-13.  This passage describes the kinds of sinfulness that characterized the time of the prophet:

They hate the one who reproves in the gate,

          and they abhor the one who speaks the truth.

Therefore because you trample on the poor

          and take from them levies of grain,

you have built houses of hewn stone,

          but you shall not live in them;

you have planted pleasant vineyards,

          but you shall not drink their wine.

For I know how many are your transgressions,

          and how great are your sins—

you who afflict the righteous, who take a bribe,

          and push aside the needy in the gate.

Therefore the prudent will keep silent in such a time;

          for it is an evil time.

I believe that the counsel to be silent here is because there is no defense that can be given.  The sin is too obvious.  The sin is too great.  To enter into argument about it would be a sign that the person was totally in a state of spiritual and moral darkness.  The prudent person will recognize that and fall in silent repen­tance before the Lord.

Zephaniah 1 is another prophetic passage that focuses upon the sin of the people and the punishment that is coming because of that sin.  In v 7a-b we read, “Be silent before the Lord God!  For the day of the Lord is at hand, . . .”

On the first Sunday of this series, January 4, we went to Holy Scripture and saw our majestic God and God’s powerful Son.  Last week we again saw that God through the eyes of the prophet Isaiah.  We have been called through those presentations to be in awe of this great and mighty God.

Sisters and brothers, when we consider our sinfulness it is appropriate that we come to an attitude of silent awe before our God.  Pride corrupts us in so many ways.  Lust defiles us in ways beyond counting.  We have no defense.  Our sins are our own.  We cannot lay them upon anyone else.  We must not dodge them with clever arguments.  I think there is a time to do what Amos and Zephaniah suggest.  We should be silent before God and feel the full weight of those sins.

I want to try to help us do that.  Please close your eyes and prepare to imagine.  I want us to imagine that all the sins we have ever committed are physical weights pressing down upon our bodies.  Feel the weight of your sins as that weight presses against your head, neck, and shoulders, then your hands and arms, then your chest, back, and abdomen, then your legs and your feet.  Feel those sins.  May we all feel how powerless we are to remove them.  Now, if you’re a Christian, remember the day that your sins were forgiven.  Feel the weight of those sins being removed from your feet and legs (feel lightness there now); from your back, abdomen, and chest; from your arms and hands; from your shoulders, neck, and head.  If you’re not a Christian, Jesus Christ can take the weight of your sins from you.  Imagine the joy of that weight being lifted.  Now, let’s sing together a song that helps us feel the wonder of God’s peace and the joy of the cleansing blood of Jesus.  Tod, come lead us.

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