You Have Been Using The Word Against Yourself

It is a strange thing to be well taught, because it means that when the case comes, the case is well argued.

He noticed what was happening about four months ago, in the middle of the afternoon, and what he noticed was that he had a prosecution running.

It runs in the background, most of the day, the way a radio runs in another room. And the prosecution is made entirely out of Scripture, in the original languages where he has them, with the references attached.

The first witness is always the plow. No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God (Luke 9:62). He does not have to look that up. It arrives on its own, usually while he is driving.

Then the dog and the mire, which he thinks is unfair even as he thinks it, and it still comes.

Then the lampstand being removed. Then the servant who was called wicked and slothful. Then the sentence about it being better not to have known the way of righteousness at all, which is the one that arrives at about two in the morning and is the reason he is reading this instead of sleeping.

Every one of them is a real verse. He is not making them up and he is not misquoting them. That is precisely the problem. He knows the Word better than almost anybody he could go and talk to, and for four months that knowledge has been working for the other side.

And it has produced a conclusion, and the conclusion is not I am tired. The conclusion is: I am a man who has looked back, and there is a category for that, and it is not a good one.

He has told nobody. Because who does he tell. He is the one people bring these questions to.

Now that is you at two in the morning, and you have known it was you since the second paragraph.

Every one of those verses has a paragraph around it

Let me say what is not going to happen on this page, because you are braced for both of them.

Nobody here is going to talk you into staying. Not by encouragement, not by guilt, not by a story about a man who nearly walked away and is grateful now. And nobody here is going to tell you to go. That is not mine to hand you, I do not know your years or your people, and both of those are only different ways of making a very tired man carry a decision at two in the morning.

There is no decision on this page. Set it down for twenty minutes. It will keep.

There is nothing to do here either. No practice to sharpen, nothing to get up earlier for, no discipline to add. You are running on empty, and a suggestion is the last thing empty needs.

What I want to do is take the case apart, and I am going to do it the way you would want it done, with the paragraphs back in place, because you will not accept anything else and you should not have to.

Start with the plow, because it is the load bearing verse in your whole prosecution.

Read what it is actually answering. A man says to Jesus, I will follow you, Lord, but let me first say farewell to those at my home (Luke 9:61). He has not started. He is negotiating the terms of starting. The looking back in that sentence is a man with his hand on the handle who wants to go back to the house before he has cut one furrow.

You have been plowing for years. You are exhausted in the middle of a long field. That is not the man in that verse, and it never was.

The verse about the plow was spoken to somebody who had not begun, and it has never once been about a man who is tired in the middle of the work. It is written in its own paragraph that the man said let me first go and say farewell to those at my home (Luke 9:61), and the paragraph is the guard on the sentence. It is the Holy Spirit, not this page, who puts a verse back in its own room at two in the morning.

Now take the servant who was called wicked and slothful, because that one has a paragraph too.

He was not tired. He did nothing at all, and his stated reason was that he thought his master was a hard man who reaps where he did not sow (Matthew 25:24). The charge in that story is about a man's opinion of his master's character, and it was answered by his own inaction.

You have been in that field for years. You are not standing in front of a buried talent explaining that you thought God was hard. You are worn through from having done the opposite.

Not one of the warnings you have been prosecuting yourself with was written about exhaustion, and the Word never treats a worn out servant as a wicked one. It is written instead that He gives power to the faint, and to him who has no might he increases strength (Isaiah 40:29), which is what Scripture actually says to a man in your condition. His Spirit is the one who reads that in a room with the books stacked at the end of the table.

And now the thing underneath all of it, which is not really about any verse.

You have been reading the Word with the wrong voice.

You know as well as I do that there are two voices that quote Scripture in the Bible. One of them is the Spirit of God, who takes the things of Christ and declares them to you. And the other one quoted Scripture accurately, from the Psalms, in a wilderness, at a man who had not eaten for forty days.

The accuser does not usually arrive with lies. He arrives with references. He is not sloppy. He picks verses that are genuinely there and he takes the paragraph off them, and then he reads them at a tired man at two in the morning when there is nobody in the room to say anything back.

Scripture used to accuse a tired man of what he has not done is Scripture with the paragraph taken off it, and the Spirit of God does not work that way. It is written that the Helper, the Holy Spirit, will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you (John 14:26), and the fruit of His bringing things to remembrance is not a court. His Spirit is the one who makes that a plain difference a man can feel in his own study.

And here is the verse I want at the center of your table, because it is the one your prosecution has been carefully avoiding for four months.

There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.Romans 8:1

Look at the word now. Not later, not after review, not once he has proved that the last four months were only tiredness.

Now.

There is no condemnation for you at two in the morning, and there was none at any point in the four months you have been running that court. It is written that there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus (Romans 8:1), and the chapter goes on to say that it is God who justifies, and asks who is to condemn (Romans 8:33-34). The Holy Spirit is the one who reads a verdict like that into a room where a man has been the prosecution, the judge and the only witness.

And I need to say this plainly, because it matters more than anything else on this page. If any of this has traveled beyond tiredness, if you have found yourself thinking that everybody would manage better without you in the world at all, please tell a human being tonight. In the United States you can call or text 988 at any hour. Anywhere else, your local crisis line or emergency number, and one person who knows your name and will sit up with you. Being the man everybody brings their questions to does not disqualify you from bringing one.