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There was a man named Silas. We read of him in Acts and in several of the Epistles. Yet in the whole of the New Testament there is not one word from Silas himself: not a word that he said, not a scrap of a letter in his own name. Was he silent? We know he was not. He was a prophet for Christ; he exhorted, taught, preached, prayed, and sang.

Of all that Silas said, what was it and what was it worth? The First Epistle of Peter was written by the hand of Silas. If we were to ask Peter, what might he say?

Silas?
Yes, he wrote down that letter for me.
He put it into better Greek than I can write,
all polished.
After all, I was a fisherman in Galilee;
I learned my Greek in the fish market.
Silas was a city man, educated,
a traveler who spoke Greek wherever he went.
He wrote my letter for me
and carried it to the churches in Asia Minor.

You ask what sort of a man he was.
John Mark was like a son to me;
Silas was more like a brother.
That's what I called him in my letter:
a faithful brother.
I met him back in Jerusalem,
when he first became a Christian.
He was a good man, upright, well-respected;
he loved God and lived by the commandments.
He already knew the old Scriptures,
and when he came to faith in Jesus as Lord,
he wanted to know the whole truth
of the Savior.
He had a good mind,
spoke well;
and soon the growing church
looked to him as a leader.
Then there was a fuss up in Antioch.
Most of the new Christians there
had been Gentiles,
and of course they ate Gentile food
and hadn't been circumcised.
To add to that,
Paul and Barnabas went out from Antioch
on a long missionary journey;
to Cyprus, Cilicia, Galatia, Phrygia.
In each town, they went to the Jews first
and then to the Gentiles;
they came back telling how so many pagan
idol-worshippers had turned to faith
in the one true God
and Jesus Christ his Son.
Everything was fine at Antioch
until some of the brothers who were extra strict
about the law came there from Jerusalem.
They raised a storm, saying those new converts
had to become Jews first -
circumcision, Jewish food, Jewish dress -
or they couldn't be real Christians.
I was there when it happened;
it made a real row in the Church.
Paul set them straight.
He saw right to the heart of it,
that salvation is the gift of God's grace in Christ,
received by faith alone.
Basing salvation on anything else
would undercut the Gospel.

The Church at Antioch sent Paul and Barnabas
down to Jerusalem, and we had a big council.
I told how God had sent me
to carry the gospel to the Gentile Cornelius.
The apostles and elders agreed that Paul was right;
we are saved by grace,
not by keeping rules,
and we will not require new believers
to take on the whole law of Moses.
We wrote a letter to Antioch
and the other new churches.
But who would carry the letter?
We had to send men of such character
and such standing in the church
that it would be clear they spoke
with the authority of the apostles,
the elders, and the whole church.
We chose carefully,
and Silas was one of our men.
Silas was well received,
for he was far more than a letter-carrier.
He spoke as a prophet,
taught the believers,
encouraged and strengthened them.
He stayed there some time,
bringing peace to that church;
they gave him a loving send-off
when he came home to Jerusalem.

Silas' next big step came when Paul sent for him.
Paul and Barnabas had planned another mission,
but they split over taking Mark with them again.
Paul needed a new partner.
During that time in Antioch,
Paul had learned Silas' worth,
and they knew they could work together.
Besides, Silas came from the Jerusalem church,
and he had their blessing.
More, he was a Roman citizen,
so he could go anywhere in the whole Empire.
They started off,
and it turned into a long trip.
They walked the length of Syria,
then Asia Minor from one end to the other,
strengthening the churches.
Then Paul had a vision calling them to Macedonia;
so they did not hesitate,
and they crossed over to Europe.

At Philippi,
their first city in Europe,
they made a good start
and gathered a new church.
Then a few greedy men raised a mob
and had them seized, beaten, and jailed.
At midnight, in jail,
their feet cramped in the stocks,
their backs bloody from the beating,
what would they do?
The other prisoners expected moaning and cursing,
but Paul and Silas were singing hymns
and praying to God.
The other prisoners, awed, were listening.
Silas was not a man to whimper,
or quit,
or lost faith.

Would Paul have been as strong
without Silas to pray with him,
sing with him,
support and encourage him?
When you build a fire,
and you get down to one log,
it will go out.
But if you have two logs side by side,
they shine the heat back and forth
and the fire keeps burning between them.
I think that's one reason our Lord brought us
together in his church:
to warm each other's faith.
I'm sure that night in jail,
Silas and Paul fed each other's fires
of hope and faith.

Well, before the night was over,
the jailer was converted,
and the next day Paul and Silas left town.
At Thessalonica they gathered a church,
but then they were driven out.
The same happened at Berea,
but there Paul left Silas and Timothy behind
to teach the new Christians.
Paul really trusted both of them.
Later, when they wrote to the church at Thessalonica,
they wrote as a team:
Paul, Silas, and Timothy.
They had a record to be proud of:
"Our message of the gospel came to you
not in word only,
but also in power and in the Holy Spirit
and with full conviction;
just as you know what kind of persons
we proved to be among you for your sake."
That's the way all three of them were:
servants of Christ
who had proved themselves to be
all that they should be.

Silas joined Paul again in Corinth,
and they worked there for more than a year.
Later, when Paul wrote to Corinth,
he put Silas on an equal footing with himself,
reminding the Corinthians of
"the Son of God, Jesus Christ,
whom we proclaimed among you,
Silas and Timothy and I."
They build monuments to generals,
chisel their names in stone,
but no general ever won a battle
without the captains and sergeants
and soldiers in the thick of the fight.
I don't think Paul could have done as much
without Silas and Timothy and the others.
There's no doubt Silas was a valued member
of Paul's team.

Aye, and Silas is a valued helper to me.
For, ten years later,
our paths have crossed again,
in Rome.
We've worked together.
He's written down my letter in good Greek,
and I've just sent him off
to carry it to the churches of Asia Minor -
some of them the same churches he and Paul
visited on that great trip together.

I wrote he is a faithful brother;
he's all that and more.
You asked, "What did he say?
Why don't we know his words?"
We don't need to know all his exact words
to know what he stood for.
As a leader in the church at Jerusalem,
he stood for Christ.
As a companion of Paul,
he stood for the same good news
of the saving grace of God in Christ.
As my helper,
he wrote of faith in Christ,
of strength and comfort in persecution.
His words and his work
were like beams of the church,
that give strength to the whole structure.
You know my name, Old Peter,
and you know some of my words.
You know Silas' name.
But it's not our names that matter,
but what we did and what we stood for,
as brothers under Jesus Christ.
There's many a Christian whose words
aren't written
and whose name we don't know,
but who has spoken a word
that comforted the sorrowing,
cheered the sad,
gave hope in time of despair,
led a child into God's family,
encouraged the faltering,
or opened the truth to someone seeking it.

Each of those lives will touch another,
and those in turn will touch still others;
so the words of that unknown Christian
who started the chain
will never be lost.

Paul, Silas, Timothy -
Yes, and me, Peter -
and you -
Yes. You.
Will you speak a word
that lifts someone up in the love of Christ?
That word shall never be lost.