In his sermon 'A Time for Silence,' Peter Allison explores the biblical teachings on the wisdom of knowing when to speak and when to remain silent. He emphasizes the importance of this discernment as a reflection of understanding and calmness, referencing Proverbs 17 and Ecclesiastes. The sermon delves into the role of civil magistrates, ordained by God to restrain sin and uphold justice, but warns against the misuse of authority, which constitutes tyranny. Allison uses biblical examples, such as Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, to highlight the duty to resist unjust authority respectfully. The sermon also touches on the notion that true liberty stems from obedience to God's law. It concludes by offering practical advice on when to be silent, such as in anger or when others are not ready to listen, and when to speak, particularly in defense of truth and righteousness. Allison encourages Christians to pray for wisdom and to use their speech to edify and build others up.

In your Bibles, please turn to Proverbs, chapter 17. As we conclude or finish this chapter, I would like to read the last three verses beginning with verse 26 for our text this morning. Proverbs 17, 26. Also to punish the righteous is not good, nor to strike princes for their uprightness. He who has knowledge spares his words, and a man of understanding is of a calm spirit.

Even a fool is counted wise when he holds his peace, and when he shuts his lips he is considered perceptive." Thus far the reading of God's Word, the grass withers and the flower fades, but the Word of our God endures forever. Almighty Heavenly Father, we ask that you would open our eyes, that you would give to us understanding and wisdom out of your Word, and he asks that you would sanctify these sinful lips, that they may proclaim the wonders of your grace and your mercy, in Jesus' name, Amen. There is a time, Ecclesiastes says, a time to speak and there is a time to be silent. And it is wisdom to know when to be what. It's like many aspects of the Christian life.

We are described as a reed or a cedar, those who are strong and those who give way, those who yield to others. We could be described in that sense as a lion or a lamb. And yet it's to be a Christian is to be both of those things. And yet It's wisdom that knows when to be what. And so it's wisdom that teaches us when to speak and when to be silent.

These verses that we're going to look at this morning, are three verses that speak of the need and the time to be silent. To Punish the righteous is not good, nor to strike princes for their uprightness. Punishing the righteous is not good. It means it is an abomination. It is a terrible thing when the righteous are punished.

Magistrates are ordained by God to be a terror to those who do evil. That is their God-ordained duty. They are ministers of God. They are servants of God. They are ordained servants.

Every bit as much as a minister of the gospel is an ordained servant. And when they punish those who do evil, then the magistrate does well. They do well. That is the purpose for which God has raised them up. To be a restraint upon sin.

Before the fall, there was no need for civil government. There was no need for sin to be restrained. There were no evildoers to be punished. But after the fall, when men hated each other and began to murder each other, then there was a need for this sin to be restrained. Now, before the flood, God said the earth was very, very wicked.

And then the thoughts of men were only evil continually. And It was so wicked that God repented that He had made man and He determined to destroy everything that He created except for Noah, His sons and their wives. After God did that with the flood, which came about 2300 BC roughly, within 100 years, 2300 BC before Christ, about 1600 years after the creation of Adam, the surface of the earth was completely remade. But there was something else that God did as well. He established civil government.

He gave us a rainbow as a sign that He would never destroy the earth again, that He would make a covenant with this earth, never to destroy it again. That wasn't God saying He was going to change His standard of righteousness, that was the Lord promising that He would restrain sin such that there would never be a need to destroy the earth by a flood again. He does so at that time. He says, whosoever sheds man's blood by man, shall his blood be shed. At that point, the office of civil magistrate was established because there was a need for it.

Just like in the New Testament, when there was a need for the people, the widows, to receive the daily distribution on a regular basis, there was an office that was ordained to care for that because that was a need. So God created the civil magistrate because there is a need to restrain sin and that's his job and he does that by punishing those who do evil and in doing that he is God's minister he is God's servant he exercises God's authority over us and when we rebel against him we are rebelling against God Himself. But this says, to punish the righteous is not good. That is when the civil magistrate is using God's authority to punish those who do well. Charles Bridges says that when the civil magistrate punishes the just, that they are ministers of God in authority, but ministers of Satan in administration.

They are carrying out the devil's work of punishing the just. And that is a tyrant. A tyrant? Tyranny is the exercise of power not authorized by law or justice. Tyranny is the exercise of power not authorized by law or by justice.

Everything that civil magistrate does When he executes somebody, when he passes a sentence, a censure upon somebody, and there were different options in God's law for restitution, sometimes It required the life of the person. Sometimes it required payment of property. Five times, three times, sometimes 125%. When he made those sentences, sometimes it was corporal punishment, a whip. There are some things that that's the right punishment for.

But when he made these sentences, he is doing so by the authority that God has given him. When he does things without authority, then he is acting outside the law. Then he becomes an outlaw himself. Law himself. And tyranny is often associated by connotation with cruelty and oppression.

But that's not technically what a tyrant is. Some tyrants might be very nice. A tyrant is somebody who does anything to impede or prevent people from living in obedience to God's law. Some tyrants are like the wicked witch in the chronicles of Narnia. They feed enchanted desserts to people and can be very outwardly nice to them in order to impede or hinder their ability and desire to obey the law of God.

But they are tyrants just as much. Our government schools are a good example of this kind of tyranny. They seek to lead our children into all manner of perversion and immorality, and they do so in a very nice way. That they are giving liberty to the children of our county. That they're telling them about all these wonderful things they didn't know about, and encouraging them in all manner of immorality.

After all, Planned Parenthood needs fodder. They need babies to kill, to stay in business. That comes from the sex education in the government schools. Planned Parenthood is the very one who brought that instruction into the government schools. So this is a very, it is a form of tyranny just as much as Hitler or Stalin Killing people and shooting and gassing them This is a very deliberate and purposeful strategy to prevent God's people from to prevent people from living in obedience to the law of God.

This is the sin that Balaam committed in causing the Israelites to commit immorality and sexual fornication. A tyrant is someone who does anything to impede or to prevent people from obeying and living in obedience to God's law. Because all liberty, all liberty flows from obedience to the law of God. And so we have, we do have a duty to resist tyranny. I want to talk about that for just a minute.

I'm talking about that ahead of the second part of the verse, which is, It's not good to strike princes for their uprightness. But in the Scriptures, we have a duty to resist. Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego were commanded to bow down to a golden statue that Nebuchadnezzar had erected. And they refused to obey the king's decree. They did not revile him.

They treated him with respect. They recognized that even though he was in making that command, he was a minister of Satan in administration, that he was a minister of God in authority. And they respected that authority even as they refused to bow down. They addressed Him as, O King, they said, we cannot bow down to this idol. We serve the living God and it is into His arms and His hands that we entrust our souls.

Pua and Shifra were asked to kill or to let die the baby boys that were born in the land of Egypt to the Israelites. And they didn't do that. They didn't speak evil of the king. They just quietly went about saving those babies that they were commanded to let die. And when the word got back that they were not doing what they were commanded to do, they had an answer.

The Hebrew women were stronger and gave birth more quickly than the Egyptians. Or the apostles, when they were commanded by the Sanhedrin to stop preaching the Gospel, they said to the Sanhedrin, you be the judge whether it is right to obey God or man, but we must obey God and not man. And they continued to preach. So where we are commanded, where we are told to do something that is sin, that in itself would be sin to do, then we have a responsibility to resist. But to resist with respect and to recognize that even as a minister of Satan and in administration, the civil magistrate is a minister of God in authority.

There is also a duty of civil magistrates to enforce the law of God. When they are commanded by other magistrates to do unjustly. See, because for a civil magistrate to punish The righteous is not good. That is a sin for him in his office. That's a sin that is particular to his office and his duties as a minister of God if he is commanded to punish the just.

That happens many times. Many times. There was in World War II resistance against the Nazis, against the Gestapo in many countries. Some it was more successful and more developed than it was in others. But in Rome, there were priests who were helping the resistance, helping allied prisoners, helping Jews to escape from the Germans.

And when they were caught by the Gestapo, they would be commanded to execute these people. The Germans would arrest these, but they would want to use the Italian police themselves to carry out these sentences. There's an example of, in one case, a firing squad purposely missed every... They're 10 feet away and were 15 of them or something. They all missed.

It was obvious they were missing on purpose. So their leader then picked up the gun to do the execution. But he couldn't. Now he should have refused. He should have said, no, I cannot kill an innocent man who is uncondemned.

That would be a sin on my part, a misuse of the authority that God has given. Obadiah did that in 2 Kings when Jezebel was killing all the prophets of God. He was an official in Ahab's house who was like a chief of staff, we might say today. And when he saw that Jezebel was killing all these prophets of God, he hid a hundred of them in two caves and he fed them in defiance of the king because as a civil magistrate he had a duty to protect the innocent and to preserve life and not to punish it. The second half of this verse in verse 26 is that it is not good to strike princes for their uprightness.

Citizens owe a duty to civil magistrates, to those who rule in God's name. And to strike at them is wrong. There's three ways to look at this morning for striking, that we might strike out at a prince. We can strike out at them by reviling them with our tongue. Striking with our tongue.

Striking with our tongue, saying curses upon them, like Shimei did of David, as David was fleeing Jerusalem when Absalom was taking over, that he reviled the king. And remember one of David's servants wanted to go over and lop off his head and David said, no, leave it in the Lord's hands. In that case, David was fleeing for his life. He didn't know what the Lord was doing. And so he did not exercise the authority of a civil magistrate as well as the fact that it was him that was being reviled.

But Peter speaks about this in 2 Peter chapter 2, and he's talking about false teachers. Talks about God did not spare the angels who sinned but cast them into hell and delivered them into chains of darkness to be reserved for judgment. He didn't spare the ancient world under Noah as we have talked about. He didn't spare Sodom and Gomorrah for their sexual perversion. And he says in verse 9, then the Lord knows how to deliver the just out of temptation, just like he delivered Noah, and he delivered Lot in those situations.

And to reserve the unjust under punishment for the day of judgment, and especially, especially here. Who are these especially unjust, wicked people? Who walk according to the flesh in the lust of uncleanness and despise authority? Those in Peter's view are those who are especially unjust, especially wicked, who are reserved under punishment for the day of judgment. They despise authority.

They are presumptuous, self-willed, and are not afraid to speak evil of dignitaries, of those who bear rule, of those who are literally glorious ones, even demons and fallen angels, Whereas angels who are greater in power and might do not bring a revaling accusation against them before the Lord. Unjust people who are not afraid to speak evil of dignitaries. Jude 8 speaks of the same sort of thing. Those who speak evil, those who revile, those who are in authority. Paul, when he stood before the Sanhedrin, when he had been arrested after his third missionary journey, he was in Jerusalem.

The mobs were stirred up against him. The Romans came and rescued him from the mob and as a result of that he was imprisoned and was brought before the Sanhedrin to answer the charges that they had against him. And he starts to testify, he starts to speak in Acts 23, and he talks about having lived in good conscience before the Lord until that day. And The high priest, when he heard that, commanded that he should be struck across the mouth for saying that he had lived with a good conscience before God until that day. Because the high priest was in a rage against him.

Paul was, in his view, this great sinner, this person who had abandoned the faith. And so he commands those who are standing him to strike him on the mouth. And this is an unjust act. Paul has not been condemned. This is not appropriate conduct for any ruler to command him to be struck contrary to the law.

So Paul reviled him and said, God will strike you, you whitewashed wall. He called him a pejorative name. It was true. The High Priest was a whitewashed wall. Jesus had called them that.

And there would certainly be the right time and place to condemn this unjust behavior. But to call him a whitewashed wall while it may have been true was reviling to the high priest. And when that was pointed out to him, Paul said, I didn't know, brethren, that he was a high priest, for it is written. And then he quotes Exodus 22, where God says, you shall not speak evil of a ruler of your people. Even if they are acting unjustly, it's not right to revile them.

It may be grounds for prosecuting them because they are under the law as much as anybody else is, but it is never a place to revile. We see a lot of that today. When rulers are unjust, it does cause the people to revile them. But that doesn't justify the reviling. That doesn't make it right.

It is not right to speak evil of a ruler of the people. But it's especially, especially wrong to strike princes when they are acting uprightly, and to revile them when they're acting uprightly. And This is why most policemen have unlisted numbers and things like this, because they, in carrying out the duty of the civil magistrate, do bring a lot of wrath against them by people who want to strike them for doing what is right. No human authority is without sin. No human authority is without faults and failures.

But those faults and those sins in a ruler are not necessarily grounds to revile that ruler. That is another matter as well to keep in mind. Even of the best kings, that God called good kings, there are various faults that are recorded of them, even Paul in Acts there. Those faults are not grounds for reviling or striking a ruler. Secondly, We can strike at a ruler by defying their authority or simply refusing to obey them.

David's own sons struck against him as a good king. God said he was a good king. It wasn't meaning that he never had any sins, but he was a good king. He had made mistakes. Some of these mistakes were with his children, obviously.

It says in the book of Adonijah that He didn't deny him anything. He never corrected him. And Absalom and Adonijah grew up and struck back at their own father and tried to overthrow, tried to take over the country. Absalom by winning the hearts of the people, and then seeking to lead a popular rebellion against David, and Adonijah by seeking to be proclaimed king by getting some of David's own officials on his side. This is the work of those who are striking princes for their uprightness, and it's very wrong.

You can also strike a prince literally by doing violence against their body. And it's wrong to do it even if they are unjust, but it's doubly wrong to do it when they are upright. David, before he was king, was pursued by Saul. Saul was out to kill him and tried on a number of occasions to kill him. One time when Saul had the army out and was chasing David, David hid in a cave.

And Saul came into that very same cave to rest, not knowing that the one he sought was in that cave. And he laid down and slept. All David's friends and advisors said, Look, the Lord has delivered your enemy. And Saul was his enemy and his father-in-law. Delivered your enemy into your hand.

And you should go kill him. And David refused. David said, I will not raise my hand against the Lord's anointed. But he did go and cut a piece of Saul's robe off so that Saul would know what had happened. And then when Saul left, he went out and called out to him and held that up as evidence.

Even that, his heart was smitten, his conscience was smitten, that he had done even that much against Saul. And Saul, you might say, would have deserved it. He was definitely, Saul was seeking to punish the just in that situation. And even there, David refused to strike the prince, to strike the Lord's anointed. To strike the Lord's anointed.

Now the last, the second, next verse speaks further to the time for silence. He who has knowledge spares his words, and a man of understanding is of a calm spirit. Like we said in the beginning, wisdom is knowing when to speak and when to refrain from speaking. And there are many Proverbs that teach about the beauty of wise speech, in fact even call us to wise speech. Proverbs 25, 11, a word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in a setting of silver.

It is a thing of beauty, it is an ornament. Proverbs 15, 4, a gentle tongue is a tree of life. That means that words can be healing. Proverbs 15, 7, the lips of the wise disperse knowledge. This is a way of instructing, of bringing wisdom, is speaking.

Proverbs 10-31 speaks about the tongue, or speech bringing forth wisdom. Or Proverbs 12-6, the mouth of the upright delivers people from evil schemes. So our words can have a very good effect. One's mouth can even feed them. Proverbs 18.20, a man's belly will be satisfied with the fruit of his mouth and the increase of his lips, shall he be filled.

Gracious words are like a honeycomb, Proverbs 16 says. A good word can lift up and restore somebody who is weighed down with anxieties and worries. Proverbs 12, 25. And wise words can even bring healing. And so there are many places where wisdom calls us to speak.

But there are others such as our text that seem to be saying the opposite, that speak about the wisdom of being silent and of holding our peace. In fact, verse 28 even goes so far as to say even a fool is counted wise when he holds his peace, when he doesn't say anything. And so there's a number of commands and instructions in the Proverbs to be silent, The equating wisdom with being silent. Whoever guards his mouth preserves his life. Whoever opens wide his lips comes to ruin.

Whoever belittles his neighbor lacks sense, but a man of understanding remains silent. Do not answer a fool according to his folly, lest you be like him." And so we have to ask, as Ecclesiastes 7 says, that I alluded to, there is a time to be silent and there is a time to speak. And how do we know when to be silent and when to speak? When to apply the be silent proverbs and when to apply the speaking Proverbs? Well, it takes wisdom to rightly understand the Proverbs.

It takes wisdom to rightly understand these teachings. So if Proverbs can give us this wisdom, but it takes wisdom to rightly understand the Proverbs, we could ask, where do we get the wisdom to get wisdom from the Proverbs? Because without wisdom we can read these and not have understanding. If we don't have understanding and we read these and don't get understanding, we are still no better off than we were before. The Bible says that if we need wisdom, we need to pray to God and ask Him to give us the wisdom that we need to get the wisdom and understand His Word of right.

And James says that God will give us wisdom and He will give it to us without reproach, without uprating, without saying, you foolish person, You don't have any wisdom. No, God is willing to give it to us when we ask. And that's what David prayed in Psalm 119, verse 18. Open my eyes, open my eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of your law. And so, I would offer you a couple of principles in when should we be silent and when should we speak.

And The first would be that before we say anything, because remember we are to be slow to speak, so before we say anything we should think about the purpose of our words. We should ask ourselves, what is the purpose, what is my goal, in this what I am about to say? Psalm 141 says, Set a guard, O Lord, over my mouth, and keep watch over the doors of my lips. Set a guard over my mouth, not never speak, but set a guard over my mouth, and keep watch over the doors of my lips. Set a guard over my mouth, not never speak, but set a guard over my mouth and keep watch over the doors of my lips." That is asking ourselves what is the purpose of the words that we are about to say?

Why are we saying them? What are we hoping to accomplish by saying them? Proverbs 21 promises that whoso guards his mouth and tongue keeps his soul from trouble." And this is the criteria by which we ought to answer that question. What is the purpose? Philippians 2 says, Do nothing out of vain glory or empty conceit.

And so we ask ourselves, What is the purpose of our conversation? Is it a purpose of vain glory and empty conceit? Is it a purpose to display ourselves? Or is it a purpose to edify and to build others up? That is what our speech is for, is to edify, is to build up, is to encourage.

Ephesians 4 says, Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouth, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen. In other words, we ask ourselves what is the purpose of the words we are about to say? Is it for our benefit or is it for the benefit of those to whom we are speaking? If it is for our benefit, then we don't need to say it, Because we already have the benefit of knowing whatever it is that we are going to say. If it is for the purpose of vain glory or an empty conceit to promote ourselves, then we don't need to say it.

Wisdom is to keep silent. Secondly, a time for silence is when we are angry. That's a time to pause and to evaluate our anger and the situation. It's a time to be silent. It's a time to give extra pause before we speak.

Ephesians 4, that same passage, says, be angry and do not sin. Be angry and do not sin. And a lot of times when we are angry, we are more prone to sinning with our speech. And so that is a time to be silent. That's a time that he who has knowledge spares his words.

He who has wisdom is of a calm spirit and can wait to speak. Another time to be silent is in the face of a complaint when we have not heard both sides of the story. When one side comes and tells their story, we think that's right until the other side comes along. So, when there is a situation where we are hearing a complaint, it's wise to be silent until we know the matter that's before us. Another time is in place of correction or rebuke or counsel.

We should be silent until we have made sure that we've removed the log from our own eye before we try to help somebody else. Another time to be silent is when we've been doing a lot of talking. Proverbs says that in the multitude of words sin is not lacking, but he who restrains his lips is wise. In a multitude of words, when we've been doing a lot of talking, it's probably time to stop and be silent for a while. Because when there's a lot of words, the Bible says sin is not lacking.

Another time we ought to be silent when the better part of wisdom is to not speak, is when the other party is not ready to hear what we have to say. And how do you know that? The Lord can give wisdom, we ask. For when the person we are talking to is not ready to hear what we have to say, you might have the best words. You might have the very thing that they need most to hear, but it's entirely wasted if they're not ready to hear it.

And so don't cast pearls before swine. Don't let your good be evil spoken of. It's better to wait. To wait and pray that the Lord would give you an opportunity, that the Lord would prepare their heart to be ready to hear. And maybe you're not the person to say it.

Maybe the Lord has somebody else prepared to bring that message to them. Wisdom in those cases, understanding is to spare our words. Another time that silence is often the part of wisdom is in the face of false accusations. Silence is often the best. Jesus when he was faced with the false accusations by Pilate and the Jews, says he did not answer them a word.

He did not open his mouth. And Nehemiah, when he had all these people coming to him seeking to make charges and accusations against him about all the things that were wrong and so forth. He sent messengers saying, I'm carrying on a great work and the work is too important for me to stop and respond to you. Why should I stop my work to talk to you? That was the wise silence.

They were false charges, false accusations, they were trivial matters. It wasn't worth even responding to. It wasn't worth even giving them the dignity of a reply. When people like that have decided that they didn't like what he was doing, they were just upset with him, there wasn't anything he was going to say anyway. There was no amount of logic or truth or facts that was going to change their opinion of what he was doing.

They had set themselves against him. They decided that he was a terrible person and they didn't like his work. So it was the better part of wisdom to be silent. Now when should we speak? A man of understanding is of a calm spirit.

There are times that we do need to speak, and where there is no option not to speak. When we're responsible for instruction as parents, needing to instruct children, or as elders, needing to refute those who contradict. There is a duty to speak when the Word of God needs to be proclaimed to the lost. There is a duty when the truth and honor of Christ is at stake and no one else is speaking. When the Communists took over Romania, they knew they needed the support of the Church.

They gathered together a congress of all of the church leaders in the capital, in the parliament building. They put them in the parliament building. And this was broadcast live over national radio. And one leader after another was standing up to talk about how this church could accommodate themselves to the Soviets, the communists. How they weren't so bad and they would be able to work with them and how they were okay people and so on.

There was this massive peer pressure being brought to bear on the church in Romania to accommodate and accept the Communist Party. Richard Wernbrant and his wife Sabina were physically present at that meeting. As Richard tells the story in his book, Tortured for Christ, his wife nudged him Sabina and said, Richard, stand up and wash this shame from the face of Christ. They are spitting in his face. And Richard said, You know that if I do, you lose your husband.

And her reply, according to Richard, is, I don't want to have a coward for a husband. And Richard Wurmbrandt stood up in that meeting, where everybody else was praising the communists. He said, brothers and sisters, the communists are evil people. They punish the just, they are tyrants, and We should not accommodate ourselves to them. They are defying the living God.

Well, they couldn't arrest him on the spot there because That would show the lie to the very thing that they were saying that they were accommodating. But they did turn off his microphone. He was later arrested and tortured for Jesus Christ and spent 13 years in communist prisons because he spoke. So there is a time that we need to speak. That we need to speak.

But our prayer ought to be to the Lord that we would yield our tongues as instruments of righteousness, and that we would surrender our right to speak to the Lord. We would yield our tongues as instruments of righteousness. Our tongues would be used by the Lord to edify, to build up, to encourage, to bless, to bring hope, and to speak of the good news of Jesus Christ. And that we surrender, that we're willing to surrender our right to speak and to say something if wisdom requires it. That is the example that Christ gave us.

When he stood before Pilate and did not answer those charges, he was doing that so that the will of God might be fulfilled. He yielded up his right to defend himself, he yielded up his right to a fair trial, and forgave those and asked the Lord to forgive those who had unjustly crucified him in order that we in order that you and I might have Peace with God and might have his sacrifice and his blood shed for our sins. He yielded his right to speak. Let's pray. Our Heavenly Father, we ask that you would give us wisdom in the use of our tongues, that we might know when to speak and when to be silent.

For you have called us to both. We ask that you would give us courage, that we might not be afraid of what men can do, but that we might fear you who has power over the body and the soul. We pray that our tongues might be instruments of righteousness, and we yield up and surrender to you our right to speak and to be heard. We ask these things in Jesus name. Amen.