It Was Addressed To Somebody Else

He can quote it. He has been able to quote it since he was about twelve, and he has quoted it to at least six people in the last decade, twice at some length, once in a hospital corridor at two in the morning to a man he barely knew.

And he meant it. That is what makes it so odd from the outside. He was not performing. He believed every syllable of it on that man's behalf and he watched something come off that man's face in real time, and he has thought about it since with genuine gladness.

He just does not think it is addressed to him.

He would not put it like that. If you sat him down and asked him directly he would say of course it is, and he would mean that too, and there would be no dishonesty anywhere in the exchange.

But watch what he does when he reads it.

He pictures somebody. Every time, without deciding to, there is a face. Sometimes it is the man from the corridor. Sometimes it is a young woman from that first church who was in a great deal of trouble and is now, by all accounts, doing extremely well. Sometimes it is nobody in particular, a sort of composite, standing in a doorway.

It has never once been him standing in the doorway.

He is fifty-five. He has been like this since he was about nineteen, which is when a specific thing happened, and the specific thing is his and it is not going in here, and the shape of it matters more than the content: it happened after he knew better, it went on for a while, and it involved people who trusted him.

He has never been in doubt about the doctrine. He has been in doubt about the address on the envelope.

Read the address again

I want to do one thing on this page and I want to do it very slowly, because I think it is the only thing you need and I do not want to bury it in anything.

I want to read you the address.

And the Spirit and the bride say, Come. And let him that heareth say, Come. And let him that is athirst come. And whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely.Revelation 22:17

That is the last invitation in the Bible. There is nothing after it except a warning about adding to the book and a benediction. It is the closing sentence of the whole thing, and it is worth asking what the closing sentence of a book like that would be built to do.

Now look at who is saying it. The Spirit and the bride, which is God and His people, speaking together. Then anybody who hears it is told to repeat it, which you have done, six times, twice at length, once in a corridor at two in the morning.

And then the address itself. It is given twice and it gets wider each time. Him that is athirst. And then, in case anybody was working out whether they qualified as thirsty, whosoever will.

Whosoever. Not those who did not know better. Not those whose thing did not involve people who trusted them. Whosoever is a word chosen specifically to defeat the reader's ability to find themselves outside it, and it is placed at the very end of the book, after everything else has been said, as the last word on who may come.

You are inside the address on that envelope, and that is not encouragement I am offering to a man with something from when he was nineteen, it is what is written, and the Holy Spirit is the reason it is landing on the face you picture rather than on a verse you have known for forty years.

Now let me say something about the corridor at two in the morning.

You told that to a man you barely knew, and you meant it, and something came off his face.

Here is what I want you to notice about that. You have been carrying an invitation you believed with your whole chest and handing it to strangers for a decade. A man does not do that with a document he thinks is fraudulent. You have never once doubted the offer. You have doubted one thing only, which is whether your name is on the list, and Revelation deals with that by declining to keep a list at all. That invitation is the last thing written in the book, and the Holy Spirit does not appoint a man to deliver an offer He is withholding from him.

I want to say something else, about the shape of what happened at nineteen, since you named the shape.

It happened after you knew better. It went on for a while. It involved people who trusted you.

Every one of those three is an aggravating factor in a court, and you have been running a court, and I am not going to pretend otherwise or tell you those three things are small. You are not being told it did not matter. The Holy Spirit has not spent thirty-six years softening what happened at nineteen, and He has not spent one of them putting you outside the word whosoever either.

What I am telling you is that whosoever was written by somebody who knew exactly what human beings do, and had every one of those three categories in view, and chose a word that has no exclusions in it, and put it on the last page.

You may take the water of life freely. Scripture says freely, which means without cost, and the Spirit is the one who has been making you quote this to other people for a decade, and He does not usually appoint a man to hand out an invitation He is withholding from him.

And if what is on you tonight is heavier than shame, if it has got as far as not wanting to be here at all, please tell one human being tonight. A doctor, a crisis line in your own country, one person who can sit with you. That is not a detour from any of this. It is part of it, and you are worth the phone call.