I would like for you to take the word of God to turn with me, please, to the Old Testament book of Isaiah, the 59th chapter. And we'll begin in Isaiah chapter 59 with the first two verses. I have a question for you, and I believe when answering this question, we have an answer to so many things that are puzzling us in this world. If you have your Bible, Isaiah chapter 59, beginning with verse one. Behold, the Lord's hand is not shortened, that it cannot save, neither his ear heavy, that it cannot hear. But your iniquities have separated between you and your God, and your sins have hid his face from you, that he will not hear. I want you to write this question somewhere so you can remember it. The question is, why haven't we heard from heaven? Why haven't we heard from heaven? If God is the creator God, if he truly does exist, if we're not just talking about some cosmic sense of something out there, If there is a personal God who spoke the world into existence, and I believe there is, when we find ourselves in such a mess as we find nationally and internationally, why haven't we heard from heaven? Everywhere I go and everywhere you go, people talk about the trouble we're in. I find myself caught up in those conversations, and so do you. We're in a great political dilemma. People on one side have one vision for America, the other side maybe a slightly different vision for America, and both sides say they've got the answer for our country. There's really no political solution for the problem we face in this country. Why haven't we heard from heaven? Someone says we need to hear from heaven. Well, why haven't we heard from heaven? If God is real, why haven't we heard? I'm going to write these things down as we work our way to the answer for this question. First, we consider the silence of God. The silence of God. If you read your Bible and begin in the book of Genesis, you find that God spoke the world into existence. God speaks and he spoke the world into existence. But here the Bible says, behold, the Lord's hand is not shortened, that it cannot save, neither his ear heavy, that it cannot hear, But your iniquities have separated between you and your God, and your sins have hid his face from you that he will not hear. I want you to mark the little word in verse one, cannot. And the words in verse two, near the conclusion of the verse, will not. Understand that it is a situation between will not and cannot. The Bible clearly states, the Lord's hand is not shortened, that it cannot save. So why doesn't he do something? The word of God says, neither is ear heavy, that it cannot hear. God is not only speaking, he's not even hearing. Why haven't we heard from heaven? We're dealing with the most disastrous thing imaginable in the human race. It's not the evil of mankind, but it is the silence of God. I want you to listen to what God says in the book of Proverbs, if you'll turn with me there to Proverbs chapter one. The Bible says in Proverbs 1 in verse 20, wisdom crieth without, she eartheth her voice in the streets. And we learn the personification of wisdom is the person of Jesus Christ. So may I read again from Proverbs 1 in verse 20. Wisdom crieth without, she uttereth her voice in the streets. She crieth in the chief place of concourse, in the opening of the gates, In the city, she uttereth her words saying. So in the busiest place, she's crying out. How long, you simple ones, will you love simplicity? And the scorners delight in their scorning, and fools hate knowledge. Turn you at my reproof. Behold, I will pour out my spirit unto you. I will make known my words unto you, because I have called and ye refused. I have stretched out my hand, and no man regarded. But ye have said it not all my counsel, and but none of my reproof. I also will laugh at your calamity. I will mock when your fear cometh. When your fear cometh as desolation, and your destruction cometh as a whirlwind, When distress and anguish cometh upon you, then shall they call upon me, but I will not answer. They shall seek me early, but they shall not find me. The worst thing that could ever be concluded in a nation is that there is a real God, a true and living God, an almighty God, a powerful God, who could change all of this. who could move mildly in our midst and do miraculous things and bring about the changes we desperately need. But he's silent. He's silent. If you came upon some hazardous scene and someone had the power standing by to intervene, to change all the circumstances, to change all the circumstances, if someone was standing by, who had the power to intervene and could change every circumstance. And they remain standing there motionless, not a word, not a movement. You might cry out in desperation, why don't you do something? You have the power to do it. If you're real, if you're able, why don't you do it? I say to you, why haven't we heard from heaven? It's a heart-searching question. And it's never answered properly until it comes home to each individual Christian. I remind you an old story I shared with you from the first pastor that I had in Greenback, Tennessee about a truck driver who came down Highway 95. He had been upon the scene of an accident and a mother in desperation grabbed him and said as he stopped to see what was wrong, please pray, please pray for my child who'd been injured. And the trucker finally made his way down to where I was at the church building there. And he rehearsed the scene to me and said, pray for me. I'm a Christian, but I'm in such foul shape. That mother needed me. That mother needed me to pray. And I'm in such foul shape. I couldn't help her. Well, there's nothing wrong with the integrity of God. He's perfect. There's nothing wrong with who God is. He's able. The Bible declares of him that he's exceedingly abundantly able to do even more than we could ask or even think. He revealed himself as the almighty God, definite article, the almighty, none mightier than God. Well, why don't we hear from heaven? And he says here in the book of Proverbs chapter one, a circumstance can arrive after we've said no and said no and paid no attention and paid no attention and never regarded till finally we cry out in desperation and God says, I will not answer, I will not hear. Every believer needs to seriously consider the silence of God, the silence of God. I want you to write down a second thing, and that is the sins, plural, the sins of the people. God goes on to answer. He said, it's not that I cannot, I will not. It's not that I'm not able, I'm able, but I will not, I will not. And then he says, verse three, for your hands are defiled. with blood, and your fingers with iniquity. Your lips have spoken lies. Your tongue has muttered perverseness. None called for justice, nor any pleaded for truth. They trust in vanity and speak lies. They conceive mischief and bring forth iniquity. They hatch cockatrice eggs and weave the spider's web. He that eateth of their eggs dieth and that which is crushed beneath out into a viper. Their webs shall not become garments, neither shall they cover themselves with their works. Their works are works of iniquity and the act of violence is in their hands. Their feet run to evil, and they make haste to shed innocent blood. Their thoughts are thoughts of iniquity. Wasting and destruction are in their paths. The way of peace they know not, and there is no judgment in their goings. They have made them crooked paths. Whosoever goeth therein shall not know peace. Therefore, as judgment far from us, neither doth justice overtake us. We wait for light, but behold obscurity. For brightness, but we walk in darkness. We grope for the wall like the blind. We grope as if we had no eyes. We stumble at noonday as in the night. We are in desolate places as dead men. Notice he says we're dead men. All of this sinning has rendered us as incapable and powerless as people who are dead. He uses two metaphors here. Notice in verse five, he talks about cockatrice eggs. That's a very poisonous viper, a very poisonous snake and spiders. He says they have cockatrice eggs and weave the spider's web. He that eateth of their eggs dieth, and that which is crushed breaketh out into a viper. In other words, the fruit of our being is like a poisonous snake and like a spider weaving its web. If you say, well, get rid of the snake and you step on the eggs, you want to crush the eggs for a viper to come out and strike you. It's as though living in constant danger and constant threat. One of our dear men told me about someone this past week who delivered his daughter to what is normally referred to as an outstanding university. And as innocent as she was, she was just standing in a certain place and somebody came by in a drive-by shooting and shot and killed certain people and severely wounded her. People are saying it's dangerous to even live where we live. People are frightened, on guard. We need God. We desperately need God. But we don't hear from heaven. Why? Because of the sins of the people. And if you and I want to reach God, and want God to reach down to us. We need to stop talking about all the sins of our country and start confessing our own personal sins to the Lord. I want you to turn with me please to the book of Romans for a moment. You see, the situation is desperate. The saints just need to get desperate. The Bible says in the book of Romans chapter three, beginning with verse 13, God describes our sinful condition. He says in Romans 3, beginning with verse 13, their throat is an open sepulcher, with their tongues they have used deceit. The poison of asp is under their lips, whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood, destruction and misery are in their ways. And the way of peace have they not known. There is no fear of God before their eyes. Now we know that what things whoever the law saith, it saith to them who are under the law, that every mouth may be stopped and all the world may become guilty before God. Therefore, by the deeds of the law, there shall no flesh be justified in his sight. For by the law is the knowledge of sin. Now God says where all this should bring us is we should be brought to the place that every mouth may be stopped. Every mouth may be stopped. And we all might just say, I'm guilty. God has given us the law and he says the law by the law is the knowledge of sin and we know we've broken God's law. We've broken God's commandments. We expect God to come at our beckoning just any moment we want him to come. Lord intervene. But the people here in Isaiah's day recognized the great danger they faced, the overthrow of their country, all the peril they lived in. And they said, we're the people of God. We're God's people. We're God's chosen people. Why don't we hear from heaven? God knows what's happening. And God says, it's not that I cannot, I will not hear. I will not. until you deal with your sin. And you and I need to get our minds, our eyes, our mouths off of every other problem and what we don't agree with and ask God to shine the light of his Holy Spirit on our lives and get us thoroughly right with God as we possibly can. Every one of us. If you want to see the Lord work in our day, It has become personal. I don't know why we're living in a world where people have invented another type of Christianity, which is not Christianity at all. It is a take it or leave it, your brand, cheap imitation version of the thing. It's some sort of bargain basement fire sale of it. It makes no requirements on an individual. It really can be done without Christ and without His holy presence until we just grow so accustomed to living it our way that we think any other way is an intrusion into our Christian lives. But I'm not even talking about you. I'm talking about me. Christian life, do we have Christian life? It begins with God. The Lord Jesus Christ comes to live in us when we repent of our sin and by faith trust Jesus as our Savior. Can you remember when Christian life started in your life? Can you remember when you were born again? Can you remember that? Can you remember how you came into some place or some person as a dead person, dead in trespasses and sins, and you left there alive in Jesus Christ? Can you remember that? Can you remember when you were as a dead man, like the Bible says, just dead men? And you came to the Lord and asked God to forgive your sin and trusted Christ as your personal savior and received the Lord Jesus. You were born into God's family. You were delivered from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of God's dear son, into the kingdom of light. Can you remember that? Now, because of that, we have Christian life to live. And Christian life is a life of confessing our sin and living under God's ruling presence. That's Christian life. Turn with me please to the book of 1 John, just for a moment. In the book of 1 John, God deals with the subject of our sin. And he says of our sin, that we are to do one thing with it. And you know what it is. In 1 John chapter one, the Bible says, if we confess our sin in verse nine, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins. If we confess our sins, he's talking to Christians here, we deal with sin in the singular with the unsaved person, the sin of rejecting Christ. We deal with sin in the plural with Christian people. So if we confess our sins, confession means to agree with God. God is right, I'm wrong. God has a certain standard and I'm living way below it and I want it to be God's standard. I want my heart to be right with God. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. That's what God wants us to do. So if we're going to deal with the silence of God, and that's the great issue today, you don't just tag God on like a tip in a meal. He has preeminence or He has no presence. He's the one and only or He is not there at all. He's the preeminent one. And the Bible recipe to get heaven's action to earth's problems involves the confession of our sins. The sins must be confessed. So we deal with the silence of God. The sins of our lives must be confessed. But I want you to write down a third thing because it goes beyond that. I could say the things I've said to you already. It seems like, well, that's good information, but there must be a searching soul. seeking, desiring after God. I want us to go back to the prophet Jeremiah. I do want to be blessed of God. I want this church to be blessed of God. I want our nation to be blessed of God. But what will it take? In the book of Jeremiah, I want you to have the 29th chapter open, Jeremiah chapter 29. Let's begin reading with verse 10. The Bible says, for thus saith the Lord, that after 70 years be accomplished at Babylon, I will visit you and perform my good word toward you in causing you to return to this place. So there is a God who is answering and saying to these captive people, even before they're carried captive away to Babylon, he said, I'm gonna leave you somewhere 70 years. And the God who can, but will not, will again move and work and move you from Babylon, release you from your captivity and allow you to come back to the land. He's still there. He still sits on the throne of the universe. And what we find principled after this applies to all of us. Verse 11, Jeremiah chapter 29. For I know the thoughts that I think toward you. I said to a man yesterday, speaking about a wayward young person, I said, you need to tell that young person, they may not think right toward their family. They may be so confused and sin, they don't think right toward their family, but you need to make no mistake about how their family thinks toward them. God says, I want you to understand something. You may not always think toward me the way you ought to think, but I want you to understand something. I know how I think about you. He says, for I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the Lord. Thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you an expected end. Isn't it amazing that God desires a million times more for us than we even desire for ourselves? And what does he say? Then shall you call upon me and ye shall go and pray unto me and I will hearken unto you. And ye shall seek me and find me when ye shall search for me with all your heart. With all your heart. I don't know why we do this, but we take this in degrees and in levels. We get stirred up about something and we give God a nod. It goes a little deeper and we give a little more thought to God. God doesn't want little thoughts about him from us. In the very words of scripture, he wants us to search for him with all of our heart. Vance Hefner said in my presence many, many years ago, if you can take it or leave it, you'll always leave it. God is looking for some of his children who get to the place where they say, Lord, I'm in absolute desperation. I'm seeking after you with all my heart. and we will see heaven act upon that seeking soul. I wanna tell you a story. I was reading just this past week again the story of the mighty revival that swept America in 1858. In 1859, it went to the United Kingdom. Some of the greatest names that you've ever read in Christendom came out of that meeting. Some of the greatest events that ever took place in the history of God's people came as a result of that mighty revival. In the great spread of it, there was a phase two, a phase three. There was even part of it that swept into the 1900s and 1905 with the revival in Wales. At the peak of all of that, 100,000 people a week were coming to know Christ as Savior. Think of that. For a two-year period in America, for two years, they estimate that as many as 50,000 people were being converted a week in America. There was nowhere in America in the inhabited continent that we have and call home as our country that people didn't hear about the mighty moving of God. And someone said, how did it all start? A man who was a missionary to New York City by the name of Jeremiah Lampfear said that on September 23rd 1857, he was going to start a prayer meeting in a Dutch Reformed church in Manhattan, just on the corner around on Fulton Street. He said the prayer meeting will begin at noon on Wednesday. And sure enough, Jeremiah Lampfear went to his appointed place that he announced and was there before time. And when it came to noonday, he waited for people to come in and begin the prayer meeting. He sat for half an hour before anyone walked in to the room in the church that had been designated for the prayer meeting. But he was burdened. He was seeking after God. By 1235, six people had arrived, just in the last few minutes, six people, to finish out the prayer time before one. The next week it grew more and more. Within six months of that one effort, 10,000 businessmen in New York City were praying every week on Wednesday from 12 until 1 o'clock. 10,000. It had no great leader, no great preacher. But one man who got desperate to hear from heaven, who believed God, said, I'm going to seek the Lord with all of my heart. And what God did is now history. Thousands and thousands and tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands came into the kingdom of God because of that one sincere seeking soul. You see, they had churches. They were going through the routine, but they believed that heaven was silent. And they knew they needed more than just the routine of church meetings. And I'm speaking to the finest people I know in this message. What I wonder as I think about myself and I think about all to whom I speak, who among us, who among us who recognizes the silence of God and truly recognizes that our sins need to be confessed, who among us will seek the Lord like that? just seeking after God. God moving work. Can you imagine a two-year period of time? Can you imagine tens of thousands coming to the Lord every week? Can you imagine the thrust of that and the names we can actually call of mighty giants for God who came out of that meeting, not only in America but around the world? Well, I'm gonna tell you friends, it seems, it seems that heaven has hushed again. And we need to ask, why haven't we heard from heaven? And when we seek after the answer, the trail we get on is gonna lead right back to our own heart. as to whether or not I am, you are desiring to seek the Lord. All the hullabaloo about the election and America and many things will come and go, but unless heaven is moved, things won't remain the same. Evil men and seducers will only wax worse and worse. May God move by His Spirit. Let's pray together.