Be Not Silent To Me

What a wonderful prayer!! It is a prayer that God longs to hear and answer. And we should pray it as we study the Bible.

John 10:27: My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me:

Albert Barnes* New Testament Commentary on John 10:27:

My sheep. My church, my people, those who have the true spirit of my followers. The name is given to his people because it was an illustration which would be well understood in a country abounding in flocks. There is also a striking resemblance, which he proceeds to state, between them. Hear my voice. Applied to Christians, it means that they hear and obey his commandments. John 10:3: *To him the porter openeth; and the sheep hear his voice: and he calleth his own sheep by name, and leadeth them out. 4 And when he putteth forth his own sheep, he goeth before them, and the sheep follow him: for they know his voice.* I know them. John 10:14 *I am the good shepherd, and know my sheep, and am known of mine.* They follow me. A flock follows its shepherd to pastures and streams, John 10:3. Christians not only obey Christ, but they imitate him; they go where his Spirit and providence lead them; they yield themselves to his guidance, and seek to be led by him. When Jesus was upon earth many of his disciples followed or attended him from place to place. Hence Christians are called his followers, and in Revelation 14:4 they are described as *they that follow the Lamb.*

Unbelievers do not hear the voice of God because they do not want to. Christians do not hear the voice of God for one of two reasons. One. They don*t want to. When they are sinning, they do not want to hear it. Two. During times when they are already in His will and do not need redirection, God knows that. He speaks to us most importantly and most precisely through the Bible. When He communicates with us in any other way, what He communicates will NEVER violate any truth or principle in the Bible. If we neglect the Bible, we will not hear from Him and we will not know His will. If we spend only a few minutes a day in the Bible, it might be better than nothing but not much better. When we hear from Him, it will be partly because we want to but also because we need to.

This article was written by Charles Haddon Spurgeon on Psalms 28:1: Unto Thee will I cry, O Lord my rock; be not silent to me: lest, if Thou be silent to me, I become like them that go down into the pit.

A cry is the natural expression of sorrow, and a suitable utterance when all other modes of appeal fail us; but the cry must be alone directed to the Lord, for to cry to man is to waste our entreaties upon the air. When we consider the readiness of the Lord to hear, and His ability to aid, we shall see good reason for directing all our appeals at once to the God of our salvation. It will be in vain to call to the rocks in the day of judgment, but our Rock attends to our cries.

*Be not silent to me.* Mere formalists may be content without answers to their prayers, but genuine suppliants cannot; they are not satisfied with the results of prayer itself in calming the mind and subduing the will-they must go further, and obtain actual replies from heaven, or they cannot rest; and those replies they long to receive at once, they dread even a little of God*s silence. God*s voice is often so terrible that it shakes the wilderness; but His silence is equally full of awe to an eager suppliant. When God seems to close His ear, we must not therefore close our mouths, but rather cry with more earnestness; for when our note grows shrill with eagerness and grief, He will not long deny us a hearing. What a dreadful case should we be in if the Lord should become for ever silent to our prayers? *Lest, if Thou be silent to me, I become like them that go down into the pit.* Deprived of the God who answers prayer, we should be in a more pitiable plight than the dead in the grave, and should soon sink to the same level as the lost in hell. We must have answers to prayer: ours is an urgent case of dire necessity; surely the Lord will speak peace to our agitated minds, for He never can find it in His heart to permit His own elect to perish.

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