I. God's keeping silence. (1) His keeping silence means that He seems to take no notice of the wickedness of men. He is "strong," and therefore He can punish; "righteous," and therefore He will punish; but He is "patient" also, so patient that, though He is provoked before His face every day, He still waits and waits, and never executes judgment speedily upon an evil work. (2) Another meaning of God's keeping silence is that He does not nowadays interfere with the course of nature. God has spoken, and now He is giving to mankind a trial, to see whether they will heed what He says. All things continue as they were, and an infidel may deny God if he pleases, and a bad man may defy God if he pleases; no lightning falls from heaven to blast either him who denies or him who defies. (3) Since we know God to be grievously displeased with sin, there is something very awful in His keeping silence while it is committed under His eyes. In countries where earthquakes happen, a dead silence always goes before the earthquake. So it is with God's silence. It will be followed, when it seems deepest, by the earthquake of His judgments.
II. Consider, next, God's breaking silence. (1) When our Lord came to found the Christian Church and sent His Apostles into the world with the glad tidings of salvation, there was a bright blaze of miracles. When He comes a second time to earth, a far brighter blaze of miracles will shine round Him than that which ushered in His first appearance. The present system of all things shall be broken up, and exchanged for another and a better system. (2) "Our God shall come, and shall not keep silence." He shall come when death comes, or rather He shall come in and by death. The sky crimsons and flushes no less at sundown than at sunrise, and the human heart shall glow at the end of a man's career as it once glowed in the old forgotten days of the beginning. When the framework of this tabernacle is being unpinned, then shall signs and wonders be shown to the trembling soul. The voice of Christ may be suppressed at present, but, willing or unwilling, we must then give heed to it. "He will not keep silence."
E. M. Goulburn, Penny Pulpit,No. 3059.
In what sense are the words true that we think wickedly that God is such a one as ourselves?
I. We are constantly judging of His knowledge by our own.
II. This is true also with reference to His holiness.
III. We have an inadequate estimate of the veracity of God. We infer from the delay of His interposition that, like a mere man, He may threaten and not execute. It needs a very firm faith, and a very patient spirit, and a very tender conscience to keep alive in man's heart the practical and living conviction that for allthese things God will bring him into judgment.
C. J. Vaughan, Harrow Sermons,2nd series, p. 321.
Notice:
I. God keeping silence. By this is intended God's appearing for a while not to take heed of the course of those who are sinning against Him. There is sufficient of God's prompt and even swift and startling vindication of His law to show that there is a God who judgeth the earth; and there is not sufficient of it to lead us to suppose that a final day, when the judgment shall be perfect, is not necessary.
II. Look, next, at man misinterpreting and misusing God's silence. The intention of God is to lead man to repentance, and the effect of it upon too many hearts which thus misinterpret and misuse it is only to lead them to sink more deeply into indifference and to be hardened in sin.
III. God says at last that He will break silence. The longsuffering of God will not last for ever. Whether we look at the history of the Flood, or at the history of the Cities of the Plain, or at the history of the people of Canaan, or at the history of Nebuchadnezzar, or at the history of the Jews and the destruction of Jerusalem, we see that at last even the longsuffering of God comes to an end.
J. C. Miller, Penny Pulpit,No. 771.
References: Psalms 50:21. G. Brooks, Outlines of Sermons,p. 137; J. Armstrong, Parochial Sermons,p. 66.