There are seasons when God appears to be silent, even with His most faithful servants. These periods of divine quietness can draw us to trust Him and rely more fully on His previous promises as we await on Him to reveal Himself again to us. But a deeper problem arises from our end when we neglect listening to what He has already revealed; or when we neglect the Scriptures and rely on our own wisdom, when we distance ourselves from reliance on His word and become unaware that we are not hearing God as previously we might have done. This introduces a dreadful famine for the Word of the Lord. It leads to spiritual death.  In such a famine for the word of God a desperate restlessness appears.  We run around everywhere seeking for something new. We sense something wrong and missing in our lives. It is a desperate famine of needing to hear from God but being dull of hearing even if it were to come. We are not hearing even when He does speak. This condition is serious, as it indicates not God’s temporary silence but our own spiritual deafness. When we find ourselves in such times, the solution is not to wander aimlessly seeking new voices, but to return to Him in humble obedience, ready to respond to when He connects with us again.  Sometimes this means a humble address of the Scriptures seeking to grow closer to God as we wait on His mercy and renewed freshness.

Automatically Generated Transcript

[00:00:00] When you’re a young person and you’re growing up and you see others involved in Christian work such as power to change and you hear of missionaries who return back from the field and give their talks, you have a picture in your mind that these people who are going into missions, these people who’ve been overseas, that they must be very special saints, very different from you, you know all your faults but they look like they’re wonderful people. And I’ve always had that respect and admiration of people involved in evangelism and Wheaton College where I studied sent me home on an internship to go around and be at four of Leighton Ford’s Crusades and learn from him. It’s Billy Graham’s brother-in-law. And it really came as a shock to me when in sharing together he told me that he was going through a time of a sense of God wasn’t talking to him and there were silences from heaven. He

[00:01:11] continued doing his ministry, he did very well and there were lots of people that came to Christ in those four, one of them was here in Brisbane, reach outs that were held. But it really made me rather staggered to think, looking into the scriptures, discovered that it is an experience that many people of God, even people who are really close to God, sometimes find that God in his sovereignty can decide not to be talking too much. And it is in those times that you recognise, and I could see it in Leighton Ford, just how dependent we are on not only the fact that we believe in God, but that he gets through back to us. And these times can happen, those times of silences where we become acutely aware of a hunger for the Word of God. And by the Word of God I don’t just mean the scriptures which are the Word of God, it’s the Word of God put down in writing, but there is a sense

[00:02:20] in which God speaks through the scriptures, there is a sense in which God communicates with us in little ways. You wouldn’t call the little ways anything that you write in the back of your Bible and say the Word of God is enlarged. But nonetheless communications from God, that sense of him getting through to you. If I were this morning to take off this microphone, come down and ask different ones of you, is God still getting through to you? In the case of Leighton Ford it was a test and I found that there were people in the scriptures too who have times of tremendous wonderment and not knowing what’s going on, because it includes Jesus, where heavens were silent, my God, my God. Why have you forsaken me? Jesus asked. Or in the Garden of Gethsemane where he prays for what appears to be coming not to happen, but he’s willing to do the will of the Father nonetheless.

[00:03:28] These times of the silence of heaven created us a very acute feeling of the hunger of God. But there is one thing worse, hear me please, than the fact of our hungering for God. It is when there comes a sort of famine of interest in God and we don’t hunger for him, we go into some sort of dead state, deadish perhaps, where God is not successfully being heard by us, if you take the difference. Sometimes he doesn’t choose to answer your prayers. I know in guidance I sometimes ask God show me which way to go or what to do and he doesn’t always answer straight away. I won’t go back into detail but one period of time of five or six years of not knowing really what to do with myself or which way to turn, where was God in it all and it was a silence. But if you have a hunger for God and that’s why you’re here, it’s actually a good sign because God does break in and talk to us at his times. And it may

[00:04:56] be that this morning that he has something he will say and if he does, be sure to act on it. But the hunger of God that I think we find, if we put up about Amos on the screen, if I find an Amos in chapter eight, is a hunger for God to speak. It’s called a famine and the Prophet spoke to God’s people about this famine. But the famine wasn’t just that God may not have been speaking, it was that they weren’t able to hear or they weren’t interested to hear. And that’s a very terrible thing. Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord God, when I will send a famine on the land. Not a famine of bread nor thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the Lord. And as emphasizing on the receiving end, a famine of people hearing a word from the Lord. They shall wander from sea to sea and from north to east. They shall run to and fro to seek the word of the Lord, but they shall not find it. In that day the lovely virgins and the young men

[00:06:24] shall faint for thirst. I just have some points to bring out from this passage, starting at the beginning of the passage. This passage is talking about people who are not able to hear God. And it isn’t only because they’re in a time, you know, we have an inter-testamental period between the Old Testament and the New Testament and it’s called the inter-testamental period because God doesn’t speak. There isn’t a prophet. There’s not a voice from God and God made his people of Israel wait, but it was because it was the change of the covenant times and a new covenant was to be announced. And when it came, it came of a rush. And it came with the time of Jesus getting around. The Gospel is about God speaking to us and his speaking to us is largely something that Jesus is involved with. Now, but I use the word Jesus. Tonight I actually have a message to talk about the deity of Christ. It’s somewhat of an apologetic sort of message about how to understand the deity

[00:07:44] of Christ and how to understand Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Why is it that there are some people who can read the New Testament and not think it’s teaching that Jesus is indeed deity. There are even professor type people at universities. One of the people in our church in Sydney came back really upset because a favourite lecturer was saying, well, Jesus didn’t actually say he was the Son of God. And it is amazing how we can be people who can get into some deathly state about the deity of Christ, but that’s tonight. But here what I’m talking about is this description of people who have a hunger for God to speak again. And it is not a hunger. It’s a hunger sometimes God can use to learn, teach you to learn just to trust him, but it’s a hunger because the hunger is on your end of the stick. The hunger is because you’ve actually ceased listening for him. It’s really sad when you see things in churches with

[00:09:01] the whole programme of the church is all about us and what we do. And our ministries are what we’re doing and the news of it is all about us. But no one seems to say what God is doing. One of the greatest things that a church can do is to get a vision from God, a sense that He has led us to a certain approach. And you know churches are put in different areas with different types of people around them for different reasons. Well, God sometimes wants us to take on a different attack from what the church may have done in the past, but getting a vision from God but I think we have in Baptist churches these days often a hunger from God the bad type of hunger where people are not bothering to seek God they just think you do this you do that you take this theory the latest thing and that’s all you do. Go back a few centuries and churches were far more

[00:09:55] ready to go and get on their knees and say Lord speak to us, teach us what we are to do. Speak Lord your servant is listening said Samuel in the middle of the night and it is something to do with being a Christian that you become trained up to know that there is a God who speaks and you want to have him lead you. I get amazed at people who don’t really believe in guidance. I’m not saying that we always should hear a voice from behind the clouds I’m not saying we should get special signs I think there are times when God leaves us to use our common sense but nonetheless we are to be guided. Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lead not to your own understanding in all your ways acknowledge him and he shall direct your paths and it is normal Christian

[00:10:55] experience to be able to report God has directed my paths. His way of getting through can change he can use circumstances he can use the advice of others actually the advice of the people of God is a very good place to go to get help but God is in the business of answering and it is a good thing for us to find ourselves not knowing what to do and to get on our knees and say Lord I want you to show me what to do. I think it’s a fascinating thing actually to look back across your life and see how God stepped in. Sometimes you think you’re going to be doing one thing and he steps in and changes the lot or your parents move you up to Queensland has happened with me and everything changed. I want to say that God is in the business of guiding people as a part of being a

[00:11:53] Christian. If you don’t believe that then tell me how you are meant to be comparing to Jesus because he certainly was guided. As he sat in the synagogue one day and said the Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he’s appointed me to preach the gospel to the poor and the number of things he said he’s here to do. As Jesus demonstrated when he came to earth a part of what he was doing was living out a life that humans are called to live dependent on Father God. He taught the Lord’s Prayer our Father who is in heaven. He taught us to pray from earth to heaven. If you want to know how to pray that it’s always to heaven where God the Father is and now the Lord Jesus Christ is. Don’t think also don’t think that you’re meant to find it all out yourself alone. He gives us his

[00:12:43] spirit to guide us but there’s this place of prayer and to ask legal and asking you shall receive seek and go and seeking and you will find. Those verses are not in the Bible. They’re in Luke by the way if you want to look about prayer they’re fantastic verses. Some of the what we’re told to do there is to be seeking, seeking, seeking. It implies you don’t know so you seek. The other thing it says that you ask keep on asking you’ll keep on being on the receiving in. That’s the type of asking that you only have to ask once and God does it. You’re meant to be developing a sort of ability to walk with God where you ask him, for things all the time the more you ask him for, the happier he is, because he wants a relationship with us that we are depending upon him and we bring to

[00:13:30] him our needs. Part of the reason why sometimes he leaves us needy is so that we could learn the habit of going to him and asking for what we need. I want to say that some of my most cherished memories, experiences have been when God put me in need, and I had to go and call on him. And then I won’t go into details, but when God acts and you’ve been praying, I want to tell you it really cements your walk with him. But if you get to the place where you haven’t even thought about asking God, I am fearing for you today. Because you might be going through that bad type of hunger for the Word of God, the famine. God spoke to his people because of their sins, by the way, and because of their idolatry, and because they’d been turning off to foreign gods, that they were going to have a famine come. He had promise that where his people didn’t walk with him in the Old Testament that he would have disciplined them by different things.

[00:14:41] There were three different things. One of them was a famine and the other was the enemy armies coming. There’s a third one too but it was a famine that was one of the possibilities that God would discipline the people of Israel and the Old Testament, but this time he says there won’t be a famine of not raining. That was sometimes what happened. It wasn’t going to be a famine of no food or no water, is going to be a famine of the word of the Lord. Oh what a terrible thing it is when you see a denomination and you see it sometimes in some of the other countries you go to and you see the ruins of all the churches they once had. And they’re now being used for everything else but the church to praise God in. And sometimes in London, I found it a shocking thing actually to come across beautiful churches and they’ve got a sign up, please give money, we need money to fix the roof. And they’re advertising, come help us, we’re just bankrupt. Oh if those people

[00:15:45] had only understood the heart of God, to go and cry to him, if you need something, let him hear. That’s why Jesus taught about prayer, one of the major topics that you’ll find in this New Testament is Jesus teaching about prayer, calling on us to relate to Father God through prayer. That’s the normalcy but if there comes a time when God would answer one of my teams that I had in younger years, we had a lot of really keen young people. There were two of them, a girl and a boy and the girl got pregnant and they had to drop out of the team. And this is a long time ago, you’d never know who I’m talking about but they found it very difficult because God wasn’t sort of doing business with them. They go to different churches and nothing seemed to click. They’re looking around trying to get back right with him. They were actually keen young people who had slipped. Six months, God left them hungering like that and then somehow it lifted.

[00:16:57] God deals with his people and this is a passage where he’s speaking to Israel and saying it’s going to be a famine, nothing to do with bread and mortar, it’s to do with missing the word of the Lord. Now look at verse 12 up there. It says what people do when they’re going through a famine for God. They shall wander from sea to sea. All the extremities of possible travelling to find a new spot. I learn by watching young people’s work that sometimes when they make a mess they go up to some other place. Start again. Sometimes not a bad idea to start again where no one remembers your failures of the past. But if you make that a habit, every time you make a mess you go off somewhere else and start. Sometimes it’s better to stay where you made the mess and let God help you fix it up and learn the character of being a person who persists in where you were. Sometimes he asks you to go back to where you made the mess and have a second try. Well, they shall wander

[00:18:14] from sea to sea. That’s the extremities of people getting to for a new scene. And from north to east seeking somehow something. And I keep meeting people in this generation who have a hunger from God and they do this and they try that and they’re in one church or that. And there’s something that’s happening that they’re not aware of that they’re hungering from the Lord. They need to go and find him. Speak to him. Maybe get right with him over a certain issue. Don’t just brush it under the carp and say, well, that’s in the past, I will have a new start somewhere else. They wander from sea to sea, and from north to east and they shall run to and fro. Now this is speaking of a restlessness. Jonah was like that when he went in the opposite direction from Nineveh where God wanted him to go and he went in the opposite direction and he had a big storm. He had a whale of a, no, it wasn’t a whale, it was a big fish.

[00:19:20] But they shall run to and fro, it’s the restlessness of being in the condition of being hungry for God’s voice, hungry for his word. And they shall run to and fro to seek the word of the Lord. Maybe if we try a different philosophy, maybe we’ll go to a different university, maybe people will have a different church. They run to and fro to seek the word of the Lord, and you will never be happy until you come and do business with the one who stops speaking to you. God is a God who’s rather touchy about you being obedient to the information and to the leading he’s given thus far, and while you go on letting him see that you’re prepared to obey, he goes on communicating with you. But if you show yourself or someone that just doesn’t want to do what he wants, then you find he goes silent. And there’s a hunger

[00:20:19] for God, and you may be someone here this morning running to and fro, seeking the word of the Lord. When it comes to you, be like Jonah. The Lord had to raise that big fish up and swallow him in the middle of the stomach with seaweed around his face. He couldn’t see, probably thinking he’d soon be dead. And he prays to the Lord that beautiful prayer in the book of Jonah. And when God hears you pray out of your desperation, that’s when Jonah got vomited out onto the island and God renewed his call. I’ve told you before it’s one of my favourite verses in the Bible. In Jonah, second chapter or third chapter but the beginning verse of one of those two, it says, the word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time because he’s a God of grace and he renews the call and he’ll start you again. But you have to be a person who acknowledges that you need the word of the Lord and that

[00:21:29] hunger to have it again. He’s let you have it until you get on your knees and seek him. Seek ye the Lord while he may be found. Call upon him while he is near. Let the wicked forsake his way and turn to the Lord. That’s when you find him speaking again. The last little bit, verse 13 of that day, the lovely virgins and the young men shall faint for thirst. I don’t know whether you have a habit of looking around the church and you see all the different age groups and you think about what it was when you were a young person and you look around and our church is pretty lucky. We’ve got lots of young people and then the prime lives are years of their youth and all the future that’s ahead of them. The lovely virgins it says. Why didn’t the Bible put that word lovely in there? Because there is something beautiful about the young people, the lovely virgins and the young men for whom it’s all ahead of them and they have opportunity. But this

[00:22:40] prophecy in Amos says they shall faint for thirst. And one of the problems of our generation is the lack of example of young people who find a deeper spiritual walk, thank God for the word of life and the training they do. We should have them back again sometime. I didn’t let them say too much today because our service order was full. But it’s a wonderful thing, these organisations that train young people to step out. And I noticed in the video about the girl that said she first went to uni and sort of stepped back from any action and let other people do things. But something must have happened and something got a grip of her. And when you’re a young person and you surrender that youngness, that youth, that opportunity to Christ, give it all to him. That’s why Roman says at the end of its big gospel talk, which the book of Romans is right at the end, it says, in summing up, I beseech

[00:23:45] you therefore brethren, by the mercies of God that he’s gone through the whole book, talking about the mercy of the gospel, forgiveness, etc. By the mercies of God I beseech you that you surrender your bodies as a living sacrifice. And when you’re young, when you have the beauty of youth and you put it on the altar for God to guide, he loves to pick that up and to take it and to use it, and to make it work in the Christian life. And you can see when you talk to people, when they tell you their stories, whether or not they’ve found how to have God’s guidance work for them. Are you a person like that? Have you found what it is he wanted you to be? The clue to it, of course, is to make that surrender, to give it to Jesus, the whole show, and tell him you’re his. Trust him for everything. Trust in the Lord, as I said earlier, with all your heart, and lean not to your own understanding, in all your ways acknowledge

[00:24:52] him, and he shall direct your paths. What a fantastic set of verses, is that four verses, eleven to thirteen or five, to tell us that there is a condition of a hunger for God, and the answer to it is to not end up as people who have to faint for thirst, but because you surrender it to Jesus and you let him guide you. And while you obey, he keeps leading. Why you trust. There’ll be times when you don’t know what he’s doing, and there are those silences Layton Ford had. But nonetheless, and the overall, the Lord is with you, and he blesses you. Let us pray. Heavenly Father, I thank you for this passage. It’s a very powerful one. It speaks to me. He speaks to me about the deepest needs our church needs to answer, is so that people hear the word of the Lord. May that never get crowded out by activities, either in our church life or in our personal lives. Save us from just going through the hoops and forgetting about talking with you. Help us to keep in touch

[00:26:13] with you. And thank you, Lord, that you do discipline us. And sometimes you make us aware that we’re in a famine for the word of God, so that we’ll wake up and come and seek you and come closer again. Thank you for your great grace like that in Jesus’ name. Amen.