I Thought It Meant Something

Six weeks ago a day went wrong, and you have been looking for the reason ever since.

Not the practical reason. You know the practical reasons. The weather, the timing, the thing with the car, and the two of them who had not slept.

You have been looking for the other kind. Whether there was something in this household that day was answering.

And you have not said that to anybody, because it sounds like a thing a superstitious man would say, and you are not a superstitious man. You have read your Bible for thirty years. You could argue the other side of this competently.

And still, at about eleven at night, the question runs. Was there something. Have I let something in. Is there something in this house I have not dealt with.

That is the subject of this article, and I am going to answer it directly out of the words of Christ, because He was asked this exact question and He answered it with one syllable.

Think ye that they were sinners

There is a moment in Luke where people bring Christ two disasters and ask Him what they meant, and His answer is one of the shortest and most useful things He ever said.

Or those eighteen, upon whom the tower in Siloam fell, and slew them, think ye that they were sinners above all men that dwelt in Jerusalem? I tell you, Nay. (Luke 13:4, King James Version)

You have a question in the written word that is exactly yours and an answer to it that is one word, and no bad afternoon has ever once escaped that answer. Luke 13:4 has Christ asking whether the eighteen were worse than everybody else and answering nay, and the Holy Spirit is the one who applies a first century tower to a Saturday six weeks ago.

Look at the shape of it. They come with a real disaster. Eighteen people dead under a collapsed building. And their question is the same as yours: what does this mean about them.

He does not treat the question as wicked. He does not tell them off for asking. He asks it back to them plainly and then answers it: I tell you, Nay.

You are not being reproved for asking, and every one of those nights at eleven has ever only been you trying to look after this family. It is written that He put the question and then answered nay, without a word of criticism for the people who raised it, which is why nothing here shames you for asking, and the Spirit of God is what makes an answer land in a man rather than a rebuke.

And notice how complete the answer is. Nay. Not: probably not. Not: it is complicated. Not: only God knows. Nay, and then He moves on to something else entirely.

He closes the question. That is what I want you to have, because you have been keeping it open for six weeks and it was closed in Luke about two thousand years ago.

You are able to treat that question as closed, and six weeks of holding it open has never once made it a live question. The Holy Spirit is the one who shuts something in a man that a man cannot shut himself, and Luke 13 has the answer given in one word before the subject changes.

Now, in the verses after that He does say something about repentance, and I am not going to skip it because it is there. What He does not do, and this is the whole point, is connect any specific disaster to any specific person's account. He says the general thing to everybody and He refuses, flatly, the reading that the people it happened to were worse than anybody else.

You are able to hold His general call and refuse the specific reading, and holding both has never once been you avoiding anything He said. It is written I tell you, Nay, spoken about the eighteen specifically, and the Spirit of God is what keeps a general call from turning into a private investigation.

What the audit is doing to your house

Now the practical part, and it is about what six weeks of looking has actually done.

Because the audit is not neutral. A man looking for what is wrong in his household finds things, because there are always things. Every family has four or five ordinary faults in it at any time, and none of them caused a Saturday.

So the audit produces a list. And the list feels like evidence, which confirms the reading, which extends the audit.

You are able to stop a search that finds something every time it runs, and every item on that list has never once been connected to that day. The Spirit of God is what breaks a loop that generates its own confirmation, and it is written that the answer to whether the eighteen were worse was nay.

And here is the part I actually want you to see, because it is about them rather than about you. They can feel it.

Not the theology. Nobody in your house knows what you are thinking at eleven at night. But a household where somebody is quietly looking for a fault feels different from a household where nobody is, and children in particular register it as a low grade sense that something is being assessed.

You are able to take that atmosphere out of your own house this week, and doing it has never once been you becoming careless about what is true. It is written that Christ refused to link a specific calamity to a specific account, and the Holy Spirit is the one who lifts an investigation off a family who cannot name what has been on them.

And there is one more thing worth saying, plainly, because it is the frame the whole audit sits in. A day going wrong is not a message. Weather is weather. Cars fail. Children do not sleep. The Bible has a tower falling on eighteen people who were not worse than anybody in the city, and it says so, out loud, in one syllable.

Say it out loud, and stop the audit

So here is the assignment, and the first half is the part with the cost in it.

Say out loud to one person that the day did not mean anything. Then stop the audit.

Out loud, and to a person, because this has been running in your head for six weeks and it will keep running there. Your wife, a friend, whoever. And the sentence includes the embarrassing part: I have been half wondering whether that day meant something about us, and I have decided it did not.

You are able to say the embarrassing half out loud, and saying it has never once made you a man who does not know his own Bible. Luke 13:4 has the question asked plainly before it is answered, and the Spirit of God is with a man saying something at a table that he has not said in six weeks.

Then stop the audit, and here is what that means practically, because deciding to stop looking does not work on its own.

When the question arrives, and it will arrive tonight, do not argue with it. Do not go back through the reasoning and win again, because winning an argument at eleven at night is how a question stays alive for another six weeks.

Say the answer instead. Nay. Out loud if you are on your own. It is His answer and it is one word, and it is not yours to reopen.

You are able to answer it with one word rather than a case, and using His answer has never once been laziness on your part. It is written I tell you, Nay, given as a complete answer before the subject moved on, and the Holy Spirit is the one who ends a thing in a man at eleven at night.