Ex 14:14, The Lord will fight for you while you keep silent." This morning, we will bring our current contemplation of this reality to a close. We have been seeing that those who trust in the Lord to fight the battles are those who come into a living relationship with Him to provide and to protect and to sustain and to comfort and to be the every victory. We have seen this from the Israelites being trapped between the Red Sea and the army of Pharaoh, through the Old Testament salvation of those who counted on the Lord and were quietly confident in His saving power and grace.
Currently, we are following the instructions of    
James 5:10, As an example, brethren, of suffering and patience, take the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord. We want to pick up with a couple of extended readings of the Prophets. The first is Ezekiel, if you would please open in your Bibles to Ezek 36:22-36. It is here that we will see how God encourages those who believe in Him to trust Him completely and to set aside their frustration and their worry and their strife and just patiently wait on Him to show forth His deliverance. He does this for the sake of His glory in His people. Through those who turn to Him and count on Him and seek Him, He will manifest everything necessary to reveal the full magnitude of His power and His might and His salvation. 
Ezek 36:22-36, "Therefore, say to the house of Israel, 'Thus says the Lord God," It is not for your sake, O house of Israel, that I am about to act, but for My holy name, which you have profaned among the nations where you went. "And I will vindicate the holiness of My great name which has been profaned among the nations, which you have profaned in their midst. Then the nations will know that I am the Lord," declares the Lord God, "when I prove Myself holy among you in their sight. "For I will take you from the nations, gather you from all the lands, and bring you into your own land. "Then I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your filthiness and from all your idols. "Moreover, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. "And I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will be careful to observe My ordinances. "And you will live in the land that I gave to your forefathers; so you will be My people, and I will be your God. "Moreover, I will save you from all your uncleanness; and I will call for the grain and multiply it, and I will not bring a famine on you. "And I will multiply the fruit of the tree and the produce of the field, that you may not receive again the disgrace of famine among the nations. "Then you will remember your evil ways and your deeds that were not good, and you will loathe yourselves in your own sight for your iniquities and your abominations. "I am not doing this for your sake," declares the Lord God, "let it be known to you. Be ashamed and confounded for your ways, O house of Israel!" 'Thus says the Lord God, "On the day that I cleanse you from all your iniquities, I will cause the cities to be inhabited, and the waste places will be rebuilt. "And the desolate land will be cultivated instead of being a desolation in the sight of everyone who passed by. "And they will say, 'This desolate land has become like the garden of Eden; and the waste, desolate, and ruined cities are fortified and inhabited.' "Then the nations that are left round about you will know that I, the Lord, have rebuilt the ruined places and planted that which was desolate; I, the Lord, have spoken and will do it." 
       What the Lord does, as we silently wait upon Him, is to show that He is the Lord God Almighty, The Creator of the Heavens and the earth. He manifests the full measure of the reality that He is the One Who rules and overrules for His name’s sake in the manner of His glorious saving might. When He has done that which is His heart in the deliverance of those who call upon Him and count on Him and look for Him, all who have watched will see His glory in evidence. It will be undeniably manifested that God has caused all things to work together for good in the lives of His Chosen ones. Everyone will be impelled to declare His glory and His goodness and His graciousness and His power in action.
	All those who watch to see what takes place will witness that it is the Lord Who is doing His great and awesome work. It is nothing that you or I can do! Period! Everything within this vision of the manifested declaration from Ezekiel’s prophecy is fully and absolutely centered in the mighty Hand of God working despite the unfaithfulness and the malevolence and the treachery of His people. God will do everything needed to make His name to be proclaimed and honored in His creation. All the desolation of humanity will be brought to fruition and life through the new heart that God will implant through the indwelling of His very own Holy Spirit. He will bring forth lushness and watered gardens and growth eternal into the arid and desert wastelands of those who were without hope and life and joy. He will be exalted in all the earth as everyone witnesses His so great and magnificent salvation at work in the lives of those whom He redeems unto Himself.
	The Prophet Zephaniah further declares this so marvelous truth in a very short, yet power packed affirmation that all the preparation, and the work, and the completion are settled in the Omnipotence and the Omniscience and Omnipresence of God, Alone! Zeph 1:7, Be silent before the Lord God! For the day of the Lord is near, For the Lord has prepared a sacrifice, He has consecrated His guests. 
	Be silent before the Lord God! This is something with which we struggle, seemingly endlessly in our humanity. We always feel the need to give voice to our fears and our anxieties, our dreads and our misfortunes, our heartaches and our dooms, our failures and our misdeeds. We simply must tell others how horrible our lives are for the sake of self-pity and attention in our despair. We feel that if we give voice to our situation, declaring how miserable we are, we will receive some sort of affirmation or encouragement of attentive sympathy from the inhabitants of this realm. 
	The other aspect of this is that we will also very vocally proclaim our every success and triumph, our wealth and our fame, our promotion and our acclaim. We just seem to have to declare everything in some manner as a means to verify the evidence that we exist and that we have a place within our homes, our families, our community, our society, and our universe. Too many of us are of the self-deluded opinion that everything revolves around us. That our problems are vastly more important that anyone else’s and that we are so important that everyone needs to know and is manifestly affected by our pain. We will bemoan and decry our circumstances in order to garner any and all attention unto ourselves. 
	Zephaniah shuts that down immediately with this command, Be silent before the Lord God! For the day of the Lord is near, For the Lord has prepared a sacrifice, He has consecrated His guests. It is all the Lord’s doing and we are to be silent before Him and see what He will accomplish as He moves forward with His plan and purposes in action. He is the One Who has prepared everything. He is the One Who has consecrated those for whom His salvation will become life in Jesus Christ. Again note that it is none of our doing. It is all His work in action as we are silent before Him and trusting in Him and counting on Him and seeking Him to have His way in accordance to His will.
	The Prophet Zechariah approaches this from the viewpoint of how God considers His chosen ones as precious and under His protection. Again, in our reading it, please note and rejoice in the fact that He is the One Who will keep and bring joy and peace and safety to those who are brought into His salvation. He is the One Who chooses and offers to bring close any and all who will call upon Him. There is a silence that is to go before Him by the entirety of His creation as He makes Himself known in life and in glory. It is that reverent hush that anticipates His mighty work being accomplished. 
Zech 2:8-13, For thus says the Lord of hosts, "After glory He has sent me against the nations which plunder you, for he who touches you, touches the apple of His eye. "For behold, I will wave My hand over them, so that they will be plunder for their slaves. Then you will know that the Lord of hosts has sent Me. "Sing for joy and be glad, O daughter of Zion; for behold I am coming and I will dwell in your midst," declares the Lord. "And many nations will join themselves to the Lord in that day and will become My people. Then I will dwell in your midst, and you will know that the Lord of hosts has sent Me to you. "And the Lord will possess Judah as His portion in the holy land, and will again choose Jerusalem. "Be silent, all flesh, before the Lord; for He is aroused from His holy habitation." 
    	We bring this consideration to a conclusion with the writing of the Prophet Isaiah and the manifestation of His prophetic word in the reality of Our Lord Jesus Christ. Even the Lord Himself was to remain silent before those who were trying to find fault and accuse Him. This was foretold all those centuries earlier, as we want to read together in that well-known passage of Isaiah, Chapter 53, if you would please open to it. 
	Isa 53, verses 2-12, as the prophet details the suffering Servant of the Lord as He would bear all the guilt and the shame and the iniquity with silence before His accusers. As we read this, please contrast it with the way in which we would be howling our innocence and shouting our objections and declaring the injustice and the unfairness of all that would have been laid upon us. He bore in complete silence what we could never have even imagined or will ever fully understand! For He grew up before Him like a tender shoot, And like a root out of parched ground; He has no stately form or majesty That we should look upon Him, Nor appearance that we should be attracted to Him. He was despised and forsaken of men, A man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief; And like one from whom men hide their face, He was despised, and we did not esteem Him. Surely our griefs He Himself bore, And our sorrows He carried; Yet we ourselves esteemed Him stricken, Smitten of God, and afflicted. But He was pierced through for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; The chastening for our well-being fell upon Him, And by His scourging we are healed. All of us like sheep have gone astray, Each of us has turned to his own way; But the Lord has caused the iniquity of us all To fall on Him. He was oppressed and He was afflicted, Yet He did not open His mouth; Like a lamb that is led to slaughter, And like a sheep that is silent before its shearers, So He did not open His mouth. By oppression and judgment He was taken away; And as for His generation, who considered That He was cut off out of the land of the living, For the transgression of my people to whom the stroke was due? His grave was assigned with wicked men, Yet He was with a rich man in His death, Because He had done no violence, Nor was there any deceit in His mouth. But the Lord was pleased To crush Him, putting Him to grief; If He would render Himself as a guilt offering, He will see His offspring, He will prolong His days, And the good pleasure of the Lord will prosper in His hand. As a result of the anguish of His soul, He will see it and be satisfied; By His knowledge the Righteous One, My Servant, will justify the many, As He will bear their iniquities. Therefore, I will allot Him a portion with the great, And He will divide the booty with the strong; Because He poured out Himself to death, And was numbered with the transgressors; Yet He Himself bore the sin of many, And interceded for the transgressors. 
	This prophetic foretelling of the manner in which Christ would take our sin and our shame and our guilt and our iniquity and our punishment upon Himself silently to the cross is detailed quite singularly in Matt 26:62+63, as He was brought before the high priest and the council of the religious leaders in Jerusalem. And the high priest stood up and said to Him, "Do You make no answer? What is it that these men are testifying against You?" But Jesus kept silent. And the high priest said to Him, "I adjure You by the living God, that You tell us whether You are the Christ, the Son of God." 
	As we have been encouraging ourselves throughout this brief study, our battle belongs to the Lord. Even at the crucial and poignant instant of the judgment being put upon our Lord Jesus Christ, it was evident that He and we are in the hands of God Almighty without the ability to defend ourselves or our rights or our ideas of justice. He took upon Himself, in the silence of our guilt, the every brunt of all our sins for the sake of the salvation of God to be manifested in truth and in power for all of eternity.  
	1 Peter 2:21-24, For you have been called for this purpose, since Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example for you to follow in His steps, who committed no sin, nor was any deceit found in His mouth; and while being reviled, He did not revile in return; while suffering, He uttered no threats, but kept entrusting Himself to Him who judges righteously; and He Himself bore our sins in His body on the cross, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness; for by His wounds you were healed. If He had wanted to protest His innocence, He would have had every right. But, by keeping His silence before those falsely accusing Him, He took up the mantle of our wickedness and bore it to the cross. He did this in order to give us victory over sin and death by His glorious resurrection life! There is no greater battle that will ever be waged in all the annals of time or eternity. So be it! 
The Lord will fight for you while you keep silent." Amen.

	

This morning’s benediction is Ps 118:24. This is the day which the Lord has made; Let us rejoice and be glad in it. Amen.