“What are you doing here, Elijah?” God asked as the prophet huddled in a mountainside cave. Burdened, beaten, and broken, Elijah was at the lowest point of his life. He had just witnessed a spectacular display of God’s power. However, this exhibition did not spark the reformation Elijah was anticipating. Instead of a great awakening, the prophet receives a death sentence.
As Elijah cowers in the cave, fearing for his life, the Lord comes to meet him. God did not appear however, in a fire, wind, or earthquake but in a still small voice, and it is this voice that is the focus of Spurgeon’s message.
It is not the howling winds, the roaring fires, or the thunderous earthquakes that made Elijah hide his face, but the still small voice of God. This unobtrusive whisper, Spurgeon says, is generally God’s means of bringing a soul to conversion. The Holy Spirit speaks not with fireworks, but with a quiet, internal call. This call is what leads us to believe the gospel.
Spurgeon recognizes that it is through the gentle voice of the Holy Spirit working in believers’ consciences that they grow in holiness. Often growth in godliness does not happen in dazzling explosions but through the patient, persistent power of the Spirit. Just as Elijah was convicted in his exposure to the living God, so we as believers are brought to conviction and repentance of our sin as the Holy Spirit, over time, opens our eyes to behold our Creator.
As we go out and share the gospel, we must remember that it is not by our might or skill that the lost are converted. No, salvation in Christ comes only through the “voice of gentle silence,” the still small voice of God.
Excerpt:
We must know this— that God will work by what means he pleases, and next that all means are useless apart from him. All wind, all fire, all earthquake, all power and grandeur, fail unless the still small voice be there and God be in it. The church has had this dinned into her ears, and doctrinally she believes it, but, alas, she practically goes forth and behaves as if the opposite theory were true. She looks for divine results to human causes, and is, therefore, full often deceived. Too much is her dependence fixed upon an arm of flesh, and while this is so we cannot expect to see the bare arm of the Eternal displayed in the midst of our camps.[…]
The Lord would have us know that he works rather by our weakness than by our strength, and often makes most use of us when in our own judgment we have displayed nothing but our feebleness.
Read the rest of the sermon here.