He Is Afraid of What He Will Owe If It Turns Out to Be True

He got about eleven chapters in and then stopped, and he has been honest with himself about why.

It was not that it stopped making sense. It was that it started to.

There was a run of about three pages where he could feel where it was going, the way you feel a road bending before you see the turn, and he closed it and put it on the table and did not pick it up for six weeks.

He has not told anybody this because of how it sounds. People stop reading because it is boring or confusing or they get busy. Those are respectable reasons and he has used all three.

The actual reason is that if this is true, then a number of things in his life become questions instead of facts, and he does not know the size of that bill and he cannot ask anybody without admitting he has been thinking about it.

A crowd walked away and He let them

There is a chapter in John where Jesus says something difficult and the crowd does not stay.

From that time many of his disciples went back, and walked no more with him. (John 6:66, King James Version)

Went back and walked no more.

He does not chase them. He does not soften it or explain it better. The chapter records the departure without editorial comment.

Then He turns to the twelve and asks whether they are going too, and Peter gives an answer that is not confident and is not a profession of certainty either.

Then Simon Peter answered him, Lord, to whom shall we go? thou hast the words of eternal life. (John 6:68)

To whom shall we go.

That is a man staying because there is nowhere better, not because it got easier. He does not claim to have understood the hard thing.

You are permitted to stay without pretending it is comfortable. John 6 keeps the walking away and the reluctant staying in the same paragraph, and it is the Holy Spirit who makes an old scene stop demanding a level of certainty nobody has.

He described His own load and used a specific word

There is a sentence where Jesus says what the arrangement weighs, and He picked the adjective Himself.

For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light. (Matthew 11:30)

Easy and light.

A yoke was a wooden frame shaped to a specific animal. A badly made one caused sores. A good one distributed the weight so the work was possible.

He is not saying there is no yoke. He says there is one, and He says what kind it is.

Which does not answer what it costs. It answers who fitted it.

You are told what the load is like by the one who made it. Matthew 11 has Him naming the weight in His own words, and it is His Spirit who makes an old farming image land on a man doing arithmetic he has not written down.

He told people to price it, out loud, in public

Here is the thing that ought to settle the fear of a hidden bill.

For which of you, intending to build a tower, sitteth not down first, and counteth the cost, whether he have sufficient to finish it? (Luke 14:28)

Count the cost.

That is Him, saying it to a large crowd who were following Him at the time. He is not recruiting. He is telling people to work out the price before they start.

Nobody who is hiding a figure tells you to sit down and add it up first.

You are being handed the arithmetic rather than kept from it. Luke 14 has Him instructing people to price it in advance, and it is the Holy Spirit who makes an old instruction remove the fear of a bill arriving later.

Somebody who paid it wrote down what he thought of it afterwards

There is a man who lost more than most people would have to lose, and he wrote about it in a letter from prison.

Yea doubtless, and I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung, that I may win Christ. (Philippians 3:8)

For whom I have suffered the loss of all things.

He is not describing a hypothetical. He had standing, training, a career and a reputation, and he says outright that he lost them.

And the assessment he gives, decades later, in custody, is not that it was a fair trade. It is stronger than that, and the word he uses is deliberately crude.

You are not the first to want the figure before you commit. Philippians 3 has a man who paid it giving his own assessment afterwards, and it is His Spirit who makes an old accounting reach somebody who has not written his own down.

And the psalm does the same arithmetic

There is a line in the Psalms that puts two things side by side and picks one.

For a day in thy courts is better than a thousand. (Psalm 84:10)

A thousand to one.

That is a man who has been in both places putting a number on it. It is not a devotional flourish, it is a comparison, and comparisons come from people who have compared.

You are looking at a rate somebody worked out from experience. Psalm 84 puts the figure in the sentence, and it is the Holy Spirit who makes an old comparison feel like information rather than poetry.