The Pastor's Letter (November 1978)
Dear Friends,
"There is a time to speak, and a time to be silent; and if we must give an account for every idle word spoken, take care lest you have to answer for idle silence." So spoke an old father of the Church many years ago, and his words still have a ring of exhortation about them for any age of the Church - our own age included. As Mr Spurgeon had it, "Treatises in abundance have been produced upon the sins of speech; but are there not also sins of silence?" And in so many ways, the professing church of our day has become a silent church with regards to the faith once delivered to the saints. Perhaps we have now fully fallen victim to that brand of evangelicalism that places more emphasis on what a Christian doesn't do, than on what a Christian does. You know the early catechising of manys a new convert: "Now that you are a Christian, you must not - - - - ." And the negative begins to dominate the positive instead of being a hand-maid to it, and we have a church that recedes into its shell and becomes silent under the guise of piety and Christian forbearance, when it is really "sinful silence" that is being indulged in.
Now, the condition affects both the "defensive" and the "offensive" roles of the church; and it affects us individually and collectively. The church has, most certainly, a "defensive" role to fulfil, and should ever be set for the defence of the gospel. But, strangely enough, it appears that many of those Christians and Ministers who have set themselves in positions of defending the faith of our fathers are the least involved in that occupation when it comes to speaking out in those areas where that faith is very often under attack. Remember the charge that was delivered against Edom? "On the day of thy brother's calamity ... thou stoodest on the other side." Edom refused to come to the aid of his brother, and when the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ is under attack, as it most certainly is in so many "churches" and denominational structures, it is nothing short of sinful silence merely to remain quiet in such cases.
"Bewildering events and confusing days are upon us," wrote a man not many years ago, "Bible-believing Pastors sit side by side with modernistic ministers in city ministerial associations. Evangelical Pastors stand on the same platform with modernistic ministers at conventions for the 'deepening of the spiritual life.' Evangelical bookshops handle literature written by liberalists. Professing fundamentalist church leaders are seeking to bring their denominations into the World Ecumenical Movement. Gospel organisations send out 'two' magazines and press releases - one for the liberals and one for the fundamentalists." The writer's list goes on and on. It is slightly "dated;" but that makes it all the more pointed. Those issued that only appeared as "inroads" some twenty or twenty-five years ago are now the "motorways" of the religious scene through the world.
If one sin, in particular, has helped to forge those highways it has been the refusal of those responsible to either act or speak where they ought to have acted or spoken. We often hear of "evangelical movements" within our major denominational structures. That's all we hear:- we hear of them, we seldom, if ever, hear from them!" There is one terribly sobering piece of scripture concerning our relationship to our Lord Jesus Christ that Isaiah the prophet sets before us in his famous fifty-third chapter: "He was despised, and we esteemed Him not." He was slighted, doubted, ridiculed, spurned; aspersions cast on His Holy Word, His Cross minimised as the only means of salvation for sinners, His sinful humanity, bodily resurrection, and coming again, flatly denied - and "we esteemed Him not." We "stood on the other side;" we were silent! May God open many mouths in the defence of the faith, even though that defence may be in the form of a final farewell to that which offends: "Your blood be on your own head."
With regards to the "offensive" role of the church, we probably need every bit as much exhorted not to be found guilty of "sinful silence" there. By "offensive," of course, we don't mean that the church, or any Christian within the church, should "offend" or be "offensive" in the way they live before others. But to "take the offensive" is such an integral part of the church's life that we lose it at our peril. "Taking the offensive" belongs to that part of the church's testimony that sends her forth (in her totality and in her individual members) to "speak" for her Lord, none daring to make her afraid. But in this, how often we are found under the rebuke of "sinful silence? How often we hide behind the text that speaks about speaking "a word in season?" And who would deny that manys a word has probably been spoken: "out of season?" And yet, if we cared to have a good hard look at our spiritual calendars we would probably have to admit that our "winters and autumns" are disproportionally long compared to our "summers and springs"! And this can apply to us, either as churches, or as individual believers within our churches, and in those positions in life where the Lord has been pleased to place us. And again, has it something to do with that "negative" approach to things? As long as I am never found saying anything wrong, then I never have to worry about saying anything right.
The apostle Peter has a tremendously exhortative word for us in the course of his first epistle. It's the kind of exhortative word that ought to help to fire our souls with regards to the things of the Lord our God. It concerns the devil, and our attitude towards the devil and the things of the devil, and the course that we ought to take with regards to those things of the devil. "Whom resist steadfast in the faith," says Peter: and the word that Peter uses there for "resist" is actually an "active" word. In other words, Peter is not simply envisaging a situation where the devil comes attacking us and we defend ourselves against him. That is, indeed, part of our Christian calling, but not all. When Peter says, "Whom resist," he is speaking about our whole part as the people of God in the "pulling down of the strongholds of Satan," that Paul speaks about. When Christ says, "Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature," He is thrusting us out, as He says in another place, "as lambs in the midst of wolves." But, "thrust out" we must reckon ourselves to be in that capacity. We can't live our Christian lives by saying, "If the devil doesn't bother me, then I won't bother him," for the Bible says in a dozen-and-one ways - bother him! "Dare to be a Daniel." Go out, bearing the sword - take a few swings at the walls of the devil's castle - shoot a few arrows into his strongholds.
When old Rowland Hill was called to minister in the East End of London in his day, the Countess of Huntingdon wrote to one of her friends, informing her, "Dear old Rowley has gone to where Satan has his seat." And if that's true, and was true in the particular in the London of Rowland Hill's day, then it is certainly true in general, for "the world lieth in the lap of the evil one."
May God be with us, then, in this matter of "sinful silence," in whichever form it takes with us. God grant us, rather, that spirit of those who "went everywhere, preaching the gospel."