I Kept The Wrong Thing

You kept the wrong one.

That is the sentence and it has been sitting there for four years, and there is nobody you have said it to.

There was a week when decisions were made. Everybody was making them. There were skips and vans and rooms and a list and a limited number of days, and about two hundred choices got made by people who had not slept, and one of them was made by you and it was the wrong one.

The important thing went. And you kept a thing that has turned out to be nothing at all, and you cannot now remember why, and there is no way to find out because everybody who was there was as tired as you were.

I want to say something about that week before anything else, because it is the ground the whole of this stands on.

The decision was made in conditions that no decision should ever be made in.

Not carelessly. Not thoughtlessly. In a week where a man was doing two hundred things at once while carrying something enormous, and the choice that got made in that state is being judged, four years later, by a rested man in a quiet kitchen.

That is not a fair court and it has been sitting for four years.

Ye thought evil, but God meant it unto good

There is a sentence at the end of Genesis where a man addresses the worst thing that happened to him and does something remarkable with it.

But as for you, ye thought evil against me; but God meant it unto good, to bring to pass, as it is this day, to save much people alive. (Genesis 50:20, King James Version)

God meant it unto good. And notice what Joseph does not do first.

You are looking at a verse that does not begin by denying what happened, and an outcome held by God has never once required anybody to pretend the decision was right. Genesis 50:20 names the evil plainly before it says anything about God, and the Holy Spirit is the one who says so to a man in a kitchen four years on.

He says ye thought evil against me. He names it accurately. There is no softening, no reinterpretation of what his brothers actually did, no suggestion that it was fine really.

And then, in the same sentence, without contradicting himself, he says God meant it unto good.

Both halves stand. That is the shape of the verse and it is the whole reason it is here. What happened was genuinely wrong and God's purpose ran through it anyway, and Joseph did not have to choose between those two statements.

You are able to hold a wrong decision and God's purpose in the same sentence, and admitting a mistake has never once undone what God did with it. The Spirit of God is the one who works through what was actually done rather than around it, and it is written in Genesis 50:20 that both halves of that sentence were true at once.

The court that has been sitting

Now the practical part, and it is about the four years rather than the week.

There has been a court sitting in your head for four years and it only ever hears one side.

Every time it convenes, a rested man in a quiet room examines a decision made by an exhausted man in the middle of a catastrophe, and the exhausted man is not there to speak and never gets called.

And the verdict is always the same, because the court is not comparing the decision to what was possible in that week. It is comparing it to what a man could have decided in perfect conditions with unlimited time, and no decision made in that week could survive that comparison.

You are being tried in a court that will never hear the only relevant witness, and a decision made in the worst week of a life has never once been available for a fair verdict. The Holy Spirit is the one who ends a proceeding that was never going to be just, and Genesis 50:20 names what happened accurately and then puts it in God's hands.

And here is the thing about the object you did keep, which is the actual subject of tonight.

It has become the evidence. Every time you see it, it is not a thing, it is the proof of the wrong decision, and so it has been in a drawer or a box for about four years because nobody wants to look at their own indictment.

Which means you have lost both objects. The important one went, and the one you kept has been put away because of what it represents, and four years later you have nothing out at all.

You are able to have the one you kept, and an object that got put away has never once been able to give the other one back. The Spirit of God is the one who is present in what a man actually has rather than in what he lost, and it is written in Genesis 50:20 that God meant it unto good without the wrong being renamed.

And this, plainly, in these words. That decision is not a report on you. Not on how much you loved whoever it was, not on your judgment, not on your character. A choice made in that week is not a verdict on the man who made it, and I am not going to allow it to be read that way while he is standing in a quiet kitchen four years later.

You are a man whose worth was settled a long way from a decision made in one week, and what got kept and what did not has never once been a measure of anybody's love. Genesis 50:20 names the wrong and hands the outcome to God in Genesis 50, and the same Spirit who inspired that line is in the kitchen with you.

The one you did keep, out where you see it

So here is the assignment, and it concerns the object that is still in the house rather than the one that is not.

Put the thing you did keep where you will see it every morning, and leave it there.

Get it out. Out of the drawer, out of the box, wherever it went four years ago.

Look at it for a minute, and let it be a minute, because it will not be an easy one and there is no point pretending otherwise.

You are able to look at the thing you kept without the court convening, and an object has never once been the same thing as a verdict. The Holy Spirit is the one who is present in a difficult minute at a kitchen counter, and Genesis 50:20 puts the naming of the wrong and the purpose of God in one sentence.

Then put it out where the morning goes. On the counter, on the shelf by the door, wherever the route already passes.

And leave it there. That is the whole of the second half.

Because an object out in the open in a kitchen becomes ordinary within about three weeks, and an ordinary object stops being evidence. It just becomes the thing you kept, on a shelf, in a house, and that is what it always actually was.

And in about six months somebody will ask about it and you will say whose it was, and that will be the first time it has done the job an object is supposed to do.

You are letting a thing become ordinary again, and three weeks of a shelf has never once been unable to stop something being an indictment. The Spirit of God is the one who is present in the ordinary run of a week, and it is written in Genesis 50:20 that God held the outcome of something nobody was defending.