Amos 5:13 - Homiletics

A time to be silent.

"Therefore the prudent shall keep silence in that time; for it is an evil time." These words describe an evil time, and specify one of its most evil features. It is a time of culminating wickedness, of imminent destruction, and, as related to both, of Divine non-intervention. "There is a time to keep silence" ( Ecclesiastes 3:7 ) as well as "a time to speak." And that time, as pointed out by characteristic features, was at hand in this case. Israel, which in vain had been pled with and plagued, would then be severely left alone. Her victims would suffer in silence. Her prophets would cease to expostulate. God, in judgment, would cease to strive for her restraint or turning. In an awful and unnatural calm she would pass the moments before there broke on her the storm of doom. And the dawning of this "dies irae" was almost come. As to the particular charactsristic of this day, note that God's servants are silent—

I. WHEN THERE IS NOTHING THAT CAN BE SAID TO THE PURPOSE . This will often happen. Seasonable speech is a valuable thing. But men are not infallible, and occasions are often puzzling, and the right thing to say is hard to find.

1 . Silence is sometimes the resource of feeling too deep for words. There are unspeakable things. "Speech is but broken light on the depth of the unspoken." The finest thoughts, the deepest feelings, are unuttered often because they cannot be expressed in words. As a noted Shakespearian character says—

"Silence is the perfectest herald of joy:

I were but little happy if I could say how much."

And the sentiment is not uncommon. "Does the wind write what it sings in those sounding leaves above our heads? Does the sea write the moaning of its surge? Nothing is fine that is written; the divinest in man's heart never issues forth. The instrument is flesh, the note is fire. What would you have? Between what one feels and what one expresses, there is the same space as between the soul and the twenty-four letters of the alphabet; that is to say, the Infinite. Can you on a rosewood flute give forth the harmony of the spheres?" (Raffaelle).

2 . Silence is often more impressive than any speech.

"The silence of pure innocence

Persuades, when speaking fails."

So also do the silence of deep feeling and of strong passion, uttering "speech in their dumbness, language in their very gesture." Christ but looked on the recreant Peter after his miserable desertion and denial. Yet that silent look, as the denied One passed him in the hall, was eloquent of wounded love, and cut the denier more keenly than any words. No word was uttered on the cross where the dying thief was brought to faith. The God-like fortitude, the ineffable meekness of the Saviour, suffering silently the devilish malice of sin,—it was that broke his heart and won his free allegiance. In this dumbness was speech to the power of which articulate speech admits of no comparison. The gift of being "eloquently silent" is one that is not unworthy of more general cultivation. To Israel the sudden silence of the prophets, after centuries of expostulation, would tell its own startling tale. It would indicate discouragement and disgust, and duplicate to their minds the "let him alone" ( Hosea 4:17 ) of Divine desertion at a similar crisis. And this unequivocal proof that they are given up might bring the tardy repentance which all else had failed to stir. When communications are broken off, the dream of a lasting peace is over. The patient will believe that death is at hand when the physician turns away and refuses to prescribe.

3 . Silence is always better than haphazard speech. When a man knows not what to say he should guard against saying he knows not what. "Silence, when nothing need be said, is the eloquence of discretion." Peter would have escaped some blunders and rebukes if he had followed this rule. But it was when "he wist not what to say" ( Mark 9:6 ) that he was given to saying most. Such speech is more likely to be inappropriate than silence, and being inappropriate there are many more ways in which it can work evil. Hence the numerous Scripture references to the tongue, the power of it, the difficulty of governing it, and the danger of it if unruly. Indeed, so liable are men to err and so specially liable to err in speech as compared with overt act, that the proper government of the tongue is made the highest religious act ( James 3:2 ).

II. WHEN IT IS EVIDENT THAT SPEECH MUST BE UNAVAILING . There are many such cases.

1 . Sometimes men will refuse to listen. The Jews did in the beginning of the gospel. Faithfully and firmly Stephen pressed the truth home; but they "stopped their ears, and ran upon him" ( Acts 7:57 ). Here was a ease for silence. Speech, had it been possible, would have been unheeded. Those men, with murder in their hearts, and their fingers in their ears, would listen to no words. With Israel now things had come to a like pass. Their ears were stopped, and their hearts within them were set to do iniquity. For such a state of matters the appropriate measure is the silence which the prophet predicts. And all God's servants, in the exercise of their enlightened judgment, will do likewise in a like case. When men will not hear, they will refuse to waste on them unregarded speech. Bawling into an ear that is deaf or stopped is effort thrown away, and unworthy of common sense.

2 . Sometimes evil has gone so far that words can be of no avail. God's Spirit will not always strive. With the antediluvians by Noah's preaching he strove above a century, but when iniquity reached a certain stage he ceased, and his ultima ratio was the Deluge. He strove with Saul for years, but when insensibility and hardness became confirmed, communications were broken off; and whether by dreams, or by Urim, or by prophets, God spoke no more ( 1 Samuel 28:6 ). He strove with Israel during the ministry of our Lord, but they would not listen to his word, and at last he was silent, sad the doomed people were left to die ( Luke 19:42 ). God ceases to speak when he is ready to strike. Expostulation would be an anachronism when execution is imminent. The point at which he will give up the persistent wrong doer and withdraw all deterrent measures none can fix. But there is such a point, and, to each of the ungodly, the danger of passing it ( Proverbs 1:26 ). Every hour we continue in rebellion is cutting down our chance of being longer striven with. Those who speak for God to men are sometimes conscious that the time to be silent has come. The sinner seems to have reached a final fixity. In the nature of things he cannot be expected now to change. Paul at a certain stage concluded the Jew to be incorrigible, and turned deliberately to the Gentile ( Acts 13:46 ). And like Paul, when it becomes clear that further dealing with men must be barren of result, the servant of Christ will transfer his strength from the hopeless to some hopeful form of effort.

III. WHEN IT IS JUST AS LIKELY TO DO HARM AS GOOD . This is no remote contingency. Such times are cropping up continually. Under certain circumstances speech:

1 . May do harm to men. The truth of God and the sinful heart are uncongenial. Men love the darkness and hate the light. The truth forbidding all lust is actually through the corruption of our nature the occasion of stirring it up ( Romans 7:7-9 ). This, of course, is no reason for withholding it or suppressing our testimony to it. But there are circumstances and moods in which this tendency attains its maximum of strength, and it will then be prudent to keep silence "even from good." It is as "fishers of men" that we speak the truth, and we must justify our claim to the title by presenting the truth in the time and way in which it is most likely to tell. If we "testify" at random, and uniformly, in all companies and on all occasions, we shall oftener harm than help the people whom we wish to serve.

2 . It may do harm to the truth. There is such a thing as "casting pearls before swine" ( Matthew 7:6 ) to no better purpose than the prostitution of sacred things The difference between truth profaned and necessarily inoperative, and the same truth listened to and the power of God, is often the difference between the untimely presentation of it and the timely. To force it on men when they are out of humour and will not give it a fair hearing is only to bring it into contempt—to lessen its dignity in the eyes of others, and diminish its chance of winning their acceptance. The truth is meant to sanctify and save, and we must be careful to do nothing that would place it at a disadvantage in the work.

3 . It may do harm to ourselves without any compensating advantage. "He that reproveth a scorner getteth himself shame"—the shame of aggravating the ease and bringing needless evil on himself. No Scottish Covenanter was called on to enter the camp and preach the gospel of good will and peace to the bloodthirsty troopers of Claverhouse or Dalziel. The thing would have been good in itself, and was deeply needed, but to attempt it meant not merely failure, but death. If there was no one else to do it, this work must be left undone. There is room for judgment and discretion in timing and planning the work of winning souls. The most acceptable service and the most useful we can give to God is our "reasonable service." We are not to "count our lives dear to us" in comparison with his work; but it must appear that the work demands the sacrifice, and will benefit by it, before we are at liberty to give up the life which we hold in trust for God. Pearls are to be withheld from swine for this among other reasons, "lest they turn again and rend you." The characters of the "time to keep silence" deserve attention no less than those of the "time to speak," and he has mastered both who rightly divides the Word of life.

1. Silence is sometimes a Divine form of appeal .

2 . In that case it is probably the last appeal .

3 . Disregarded, it is the lull before the storm .