Let Them Come Themselves

Twenty two years he has looked after that house and the ground round it.

He came at nineteen. He knows where the water goes when it rains and which window has never shut properly since 2009, and he has repaired that window six times and could replace it in a day if anybody would let him.

There is a way he is spoken to. It is not every day. It is the way you would speak to something rather than somebody, and it happens in front of guests more than it happens when there is nobody there, which he noticed years ago and has never said out loud.

Last month it happened over nothing at all, a delivery that came late that had nothing to do with him, and a guest looked at the floor.

He said nothing. He never says anything. And two people have told him, at different times and both meaning well, that bearing it quietly is what a godly man does.

He has used the word humility about it for so long that the word has gone strange to him, the way any word does if you say it four hundred times.

If somebody has told you that a godly person absorbs it, then this article is for you, and I am going to be plain.

Paul, who would not be sent away quietly

Let me say it without softening, because you have had years of softening.

Humility has never meant being available to be treated as less than a person. It is a posture a man takes before God, on purpose, and nobody else can take it on his behalf by speaking to him a certain way in front of guests.

Now read what an apostle did when something unlawful had been done to him, because most people have never noticed this passage exists.

Paul and Silas had been beaten publicly, without trial, and locked up. In the morning the magistrates sent word to let them go quietly, which was the convenient ending for everybody.

But Paul said unto them, They have beaten us openly uncondemned, being Romans, and have cast us into prison; and now do they thrust us out privily? nay verily; but let them come themselves and fetch us out.Acts 16:37

Nay verily. Let them come themselves.

That is not a man defending his comfort. He had already taken the beating and he does not ask for it to be undone. What he refuses is the quiet exit, because a quiet exit would let an unlawful act stay unnamed, and the next man through that town would get the same.

You are allowed to say that a thing was not right, and saying it is order rather than pride. That is not my opinion about your house. It is written in Acts 16:37, and it is the Holy Spirit and not my sentence who carries a written line past a man's ears into the place where he actually lives.

Nobody in the history of the church has managed to call Paul proud for that paragraph. He wrote most of what we know about humility, and he wrote it after that morning.

So twenty two years of saying nothing has not been godliness. You have a standing that is not decided by how anybody speaks to you, and it is intact this evening. The word settled that before you came at nineteen, and the same Spirit who inspired it is on that ground while you read this.

What the word has been doing

Here is worth naming, because you noticed something years ago and have never said it.

You noticed that it happens more in front of guests than when the house is empty. That is not a small observation and you should trust yourself about it, because it tells you what the speaking is for. A thing done more often when there is an audience is being done for the audience.

And the word humility has been doing a particular job in you. It has been the thing that makes the next time bearable, because if it is humility then it is yours and it has a purpose. Take the word away and it is only what it is, and that is much harder to stand in.

I am not going to take a real thing off you. Patience is real, and forbearance is real, and there is genuine godliness in not answering every slight, and you have plenty of it.

But those are things a man chooses. And what has been happening in front of guests for twenty two years was never offered to you as a choice.

You have a dignity God gave and no household can spend, and it has not been reduced by one word said in front of anybody. Acts 16 has an apostle refusing a quiet exit; His Spirit is the one who lets a man see plainly what is being done without it becoming his fault.

Now, plainly, and this is the part that matters most. Nothing here is telling you to stay in that position and nothing here is telling you to leave it. I do not know your wage, your family, your papers, your age or what work there is where you live, and a page that issued you an instruction about that would be pretending to a knowledge it does not have. That is yours, and it belongs to the people who actually know your life, and to God.

What can be said is that you are allowed to tell somebody who can act, and that naming it is not a failure of humility. Tell one person. And if any of this has gone as far as thinking about not being here at all, please tell somebody living today: in the United States, 988 answers by call or text at any hour, and if you are in danger, use your emergency number.