The Quiet Place

I'd love to hear what you thought about sitting in the silence.

Yeah.

Huh?

Loved it.

Loved it.

It's okay.

If you if you love it, that's good.

Some of you might have felt something else.

Peaceful.

Anybody start feeling awkward?

I I felt awkward.

I was afraid you were going to walk out.

I'd only feel worse if you walked out now than I'm up here.

Some of us really don't know what to do with silence and solitude.

And I'm just going to be honest with you that last week I went home and I just, I just, I told my wife, I said, I I feel, I feel so ill-equipped to preach on the Sabbath, preach on the principle of the Sabbath, and to preach on solitude and silence.

Because it's so hard for me.

I'm not a person that sits still easily in solitude and silence.

I can sit still and watch something.

Even in exercise or walking, I tend to have something in my ear, and I'm listening.

Sometimes we wake up in silence.

I'm always the first one up in my house.

And so there's this battle for me to lie there or to go to the chair, my place, my place with the Lord.

There's this battle for me to reach for what?

Yeah.

What has happened in the world while I've been asleep?

And so there's this struggle.

I don't know if you're with me on this, this struggle and some of these important disciplines or practices that help us grow into the people that God wants us to be.

Microsoft did a study and research that concluded that human attention spans have decreased from twelve seconds, maybe a decade or so ago, to eight seconds.

Primarily since the mobile revolution has taken place.

Our attention spans have gone from 12 seconds to eight seconds, which means some of you are gonna miss half the sermon.

Because you're gonna be in and out.

And a goldfish has the attention span of nine seconds.

And so we now have a shorter attention span than a goldfish.

And so we need a better attention span for a lot of reasons.

We need to have a better attention span for maybe our work, for school, our education, for relationships, but our greatest need is much deeper than that.

It's the need to know God at a deeper level.

And so the second need for solitude and silence is to rid ourselves of this hurry sickness so we can even diagnose the hurt and the pain of our own souls.

Ruth Haley Barton, in her book titled Solitude and Silence, she says, our souls are like jars of river water.

And in our culture of busyness, we stay constantly shaken.

And what if our greatest need is to sit still long enough that the sediment can settle and the water of our souls can become clear?

What if solitude and silence is where we discover God more deeply?

What if it is in solitude or silence that we discover the deepest needs for our soul?

The pain, the hurt.

Dallas Willard, he says, silence is frightening.

Listen, because it strips us as nothing else does, throwing us upon the stark realities of our life.

It reminds us of death, which will cut us off from this world and leave only us and God.

And in the quiet, what if there turns out to be very little between us and God?

So solitude and silence offers an invitation to be still and to know.

Beyond our addiction to noise, beyond words, beyond people, beyond performance-oriented activity, be still and know.

Know what?

Be still and know what?

Be still and know God and know the condition and the need of our own heart and soul.

And so, kind of the big idea this morning is solitude and silence are practices that position us to be in the presence of God and to experience the healing that He offers for our souls.

We've said this whole series that Jesus is inviting us into a life.

He's inviting us into a life.

Away from the heavy burdens, away from the busyness and the hurry sickness.

He says, we come back to this verse over and over.

Matthew 11, 28 and 29.

Then Jesus said, Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.

I will give you rest.

Take my yoke upon you.

Let me teach you.

Because I am humble and gentle at heart.

Jesus is describing his character.

He's telling you that he is humble and gentle in heart.

He wants you to find rest.

Come to me, all of you who were weary and heavy laden.

You'll find rest for your souls.

And so as we conclude this series titled The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry, we're addressing, we've been addressing this hurry sickness, this American Western issue culture.

We struggle with achievement and production and with participation and everything, juggling multiple projects that drive a wedge between ourselves and the life that Jesus wants for us.

And it's an abundant life.

The enemy comes to steal, kill, and destroy.

Jesus says, I've come that you would have life and have it abundantly.

Abundantly.

And so in week one, we talked about how the fact we've got to slow down.

We've got to slow down and walk at the speed of love.

We looked at the story of the Good Samaritan and how there are going to be people that come across our paths and their opportunities.

We see them sometimes as distractions, but they're opportunities, and God calls us to walk at the speed of love.

God is a three-mile-an-hour guide.

What is three mile an hour?

It's just the speed that you walk at at a leisurely pace.

A walk that you would take on the beach with your spouse or your family or a loved one.

It's just it's it's a it's a conversational walk.

And so Jesus tells us out of that story, that's how we keep the great commandment, which is to love God with all of our heart and love people are ourselves.

In week two, we said, if you want to experience the life of Jesus, you need to adopt the lifestyle of Jesus.

We talked about having a rule of life.

A rule of life is simply where you actually have a set order in your life that is like a trellis where a vine can attach itself and grow in a healthy way in such a way that it will produce healthy fruit.

And so what is God, Jesus says that you, if you abide in me, I will abide in you.

And as a result of that, he says, I will produce, I will produce much fruit.

I always I think I see, as I look in Scripture, there's two types of fruit.

There's the fruit of the Spirit, but there's also the fruit of other believers.

It's us sharing our faith.

It's us being willing to consider the needs of people that are outside of Jesus.

That they need Christ.

They need Jesus.

And so my question for you is have you ever have you ever won a soul to Christ?

Have you ever shared your faith?

When was the last time?

You shared your faith.

And do we have the fruit of the Spirit?

Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, self-control, Paul says in Galatians.

And so that's the trellis.

And last week we looked at the practice of the Sabbath, this gift from God, that we work out of the rest that God gives us.

And that should be, we should not ignore the Sabbath.

We shouldn't.

God gave it to us as a gift, a 24-hour period.

That's part of the trellis.

And I know it's not it's not condemnation that I am trying to preach over you.

I am honest to tell you that that is a huge struggle.

This is so foreign to us.

But it's something that we learn from Jesus, that Jesus engaged in the practice of solitude and silence.

Jesus engaged in this.

Look at Luke 4, 1 and 2.

Then Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan River.

He was led by the Spirit in the wilderness where he was tempted by the devil for 40 days.

Jesus ate nothing all that time and became very hungry.

So the first thing that Jesus does before he even goes into his public ministry, right after he's baptized, right after God speaks and says, This is my son in whom I am well pleased, after he receives the Holy Spirit, his first response is to go into the wilderness in solitude and silence.

But Luke 5, 16 says that, but Jesus often withdrew to the wilderness for prayer.

He often, as a matter of fact, Luke records nine times in the gospel, his gospel.

Luke records nine times in his gospel that Jesus retreated and withdrew.

It was a regular practice of his life.

It was a model for us.

And Jesus was not an introvert.

Jesus was never never meant to teach us to live a monastic life, to go into a monastery away and to build a wall away from the world.

No, Jesus models to us that he's compassionate, that he cares, he heals, he came to seek and save the lost.

William Barclay says this it may be, it may well be that the whole trouble in our lives is that we give God no opportunity to speak to us because we do not know how to be still and to listen.

We give God no time to recharge us with spiritual energy and strength because there's no time when we wait upon him.

How can we shoulder life's burdens if we have no contact with him who is the Lord of all good life?

After the death of John the Baptist, Jesus is feeding the masses.

We see in Mark 6, 30 and 31, the apostles returned to Jesus from their ministry church tour and told him all they had done and taught.

Then Jesus said, Let's go off by ourselves to a quiet place and rest a while.

He said this because there were so many people coming and going that Jesus and his apostles didn't even have time to eat.

Now, there is a whole range of ages and life's seasons represented in this room.

And so I I did a little research over the last few weeks.

I've just been asking people about how they spend, do they spend any time in quiet and solitude?

And so my my postal, my regular mail lady, she she comes and she's the one that she comes the the most regular, Margaret.

So I go out a few about a month ago, and she had a package.

I said, Do you have my book that I ordered?

She said, Yeah, I got your book.

What's your book about?

I said, It's it's titled Solitude and Silence.

Oh, I said, Margaret, do you ever have any solitude and silence?

She said, I sure do.

She said, When I get home, the first thing I do is spend about 15 or 20 minutes.

No TV, no phone, no anything, just me and God.

And me and Jill and I have gotten to know Margaret pretty well over the years, and she's a follower.

She's a believer.

But I mean, she did not hesitate.

Now, Margaret is is is probably you know getting close to retirement.

She's she's old like me.

But I've also asked a few of you, because I know that when we talk about solitude and silence, when you are young and you have children that are in elementary school, preschool, or newborns, when I talk about solitude and silence, it might as well be why, why, why, why, why, why, why.

Right?

So I was getting my teeth cleaned the other day, and I asked my dental hygienist, so I'm preaching on solitude and silence.

I said, You you've got you've got a three-year-old, I hope my memory is correct, and a 10 or 12 week week old baby.

I'm like, there, how in the world could you have any solitude or silence?

And she said, you know what?

I have to I have to pick my times, and sometimes it's in the car, and I just turn everything off.

And it's me and God.

And so I I I recognize the struggle depending on where you are in life, maybe depending on your personality.

We listen, we live in a spiritual battle.

Paul says we war not against flesh and blood, but against the powers and principalities of this world.

And so we we see this in the experience that Elijah the prophet had.

I mean, this is a physical representation of this spiritual battle where he is demonstrating the reality of Yahweh, the one true God, over against the prophets of Baal and the false gods that they worship.

And so there's two altars, and I mean it is game on.

He says, You build an altar and you called your gods, you call to your gods to come down with fire.

I'll build my altar and I'll call to my God, and we'll see whose God is real.

And and the short part of the story is that the prophets of Baal cry and cry and cry out to God.

Nothing happens to the point that Elijah makes fun of them.

Where is your God?

Is he off complaining somewhere or has he gone to the bathroom?

That's the literal translation.

And so he calls one time after water is poured on the altar, he calls and God responds and just engulfs the altar with flames.

God has won.

God has won the battle, right?

God has won the battle.

But but we we know we know the story that that Jezebel, the wife of Ahab, who were who were who were the, had led the northern kingdom of Israel away from God.

Jezebel sends a message to Elijah, I'm going to come and I and I'm coming after you.

And all the prophets of Baal had been killed.

He said, She says, I'm gonna make sure the same thing happens to you.

Now, now, if I'm Elijah, man, I'm puffing out my chest.

Because I've just seen God show up.

And what does Elijah do?

He runs.

He runs in in fear.

He runs in weariness.

He runs and he finds himself under a broom tree.

1 Kings 19, 4 and 5.

Then he went on alone into the wilderness, traveling all day.

He sat down under a solitary broom tree and he prayed that he might die.

Can you believe that?

He prayed that he might die.

So Elijah is experiencing emotional and mental anguish.

I have had enough.

Lord, he said, take my life, for I am no better than my ancestors who already died.

Then he laid down and he slept under the broom tree.

But as he was sleeping, an angel, listen, an angel touched him and told him, Get up and eat.

And so Jehovah Jirah has provided food for his prophet.

And he has been provided rest that only God can give.

Solitude often provides us much-needed rest from the battles of life.

And Elijah continues to sit, continues to rest.

In verse 11, it says God speaks to him, Go out and stand before me on the mountain, the Lord told him.

And as Elijah stood there, the Lord passed by, and a mighty windstorm hit the mountain.

It was such a terrible blast that the rocks were torn loose.

But the Lord was not in the wind.

After the wind, there was an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake.

After the earthquake, there was a fire, but the Lord was not in a fire.

After the fire, there was the sound of what?

A gentle whisper.

You know what the literal translation of that is?

Thin silence.

Thin silence.

He heard the Lord in a calm silence.

A whisper.

Some translations say whisper, some say silence, some say stillness.

It's the same, same wording in Job 416, where Job says, In the silence I heard a voice.

Solitude and silence allow us to clearly hear the voice of God.

Henry Nowen says this.

He says, Without solitude, it is virtually impossible to live a spiritual life.

We do not take the spiritual life seriously if we do not set aside some time to be with God and to listen to him.

Solitude and silence provide the much needed space for the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives.

Can we read it together out loud?

Let's read it.

One, two, three.

Be still and know that I am God.

I will be honored by every nation.

I will be honored throughout the world.

So what does it mean to be still?

It was translated into Latin.

And the Latin word for be still is vacay.

Vacay, and it's where we get the word vacation.

Does anybody need a vacation?

I think that we've got to learn, even when we can't get away, we've got to learn how to get away.

Now, would you just bow your heads?

I'm gonna want you your eyes closed and your heads bowed.

In a second, we're gonna sit in some silence, but I want to I want you to I want you to I want to give you some practical things.

How do we do this?

Start simple, don't bite off too much.

This is what, as I have tried to apply this, the first step is choosing to be present.

Choose to be present.

Don't escape.

Don't escape.

We we self-medicate.

And you say, well, Russ, I don't use drugs or I don't drink, but we self-medicate with technology.

We self-medicate with with movies or videos, we self-medicate with something.

Have your coffee without reading anything or looking at a device.

Take a walk without your earbuds.

Drive in your vehicle with the radio off in silence.

Take thirty minutes a day if you have it, when you have it.

Try that, and then at some point take half a day and you spend it with the Lord.

Be captivated by his creation.

Sometimes it's a moment.

Sometimes it's just us breathing in and breathing out.

The Lord is my shepherd.

I shall not want.

The Lord is my shepherd.

I shall not want.

My Jesus, I belong to you.

Breathe in, breathe out.

Let's practice for a moment.