There is a plate on the wall by the back door and it has been there since before he was born, and it has the verse on it in that lettering they used to do.
As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.
His grandmother put it up. His mother left it up. He has left it up, for eleven years now on his own, and about four years ago he started not looking at it on the way past, which he did not notice himself doing until his sister pointed at it in June and said something warm about how good it was that he still had it.
He is fifty five. His wife died eleven years ago and there were no children, and the house is one person.
He is not lonely in the way people mean when they say it kindly. He has the road, and the two farms either side, and a Thursday thing he goes to, and a phone that rings often enough.
He is just, and this is the exact word and he has never said it, disqualified.
That verse belongs to somebody with a full table. That is what he has believed, without ever once examining it, since about the third year. It is a verse for a man with people around him, standing up in front of them, making a decision on their behalf, and he has none of that, so the plate on the wall is a nice thing from his grandmother and it is not addressed to him.
He puts one plate out. He eats at the table, not standing, because his wife would have had something to say about that.
The kitchen at seven in the evening in the summer gets the light right down the length of it and onto the plate on the wall and the lettering, and he has been sitting in it since about half past six.
There is a sentence in Joshua that everybody quotes and almost nobody reads the setup to.
As for me and my house
I have to be careful here, and considerably more careful than usual, because this is where somebody normally hands over a consolation. Your church is your family. God will bring somebody. I am not going to do either. A man of fifty five does not need to be told his situation is secretly fine, and nobody talking about God has been authorized to promise him a table.
Joshua is old and he is at Shechem and he has the whole nation in front of him, and he tells them to choose. And then he says the sentence: And if it seem evil unto you to serve the Lord, choose you this day whom ye will serve; whether the gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of the flood, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land ye dwell: but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord (Joshua 24:15).
Now read what it is. It is not an announcement about the composition of his household and it is not a report on how many people agreed with him.
It is a declaration. He is standing in front of a nation that is wavering and he plants a flag, out loud, on his own behalf and on behalf of everything he is responsible for, and the thing he is settling is direction rather than numbers.
You have been reading a decision as a census. That is not me stretching the verse; Joshua 24:15 is a choice announced in public and the household is named as what the choice covers, and the Holy Spirit who preserved that sentence did not attach a count to it.
And notice the word house in that period. It does not mean the people currently in the building. It means everything that stands under a man: his ground, his animals, his workers, what he owns, what he has responsibility for, and whoever is under his roof, in whatever number that happens to be.
And if it seem evil unto you to serve the LORD, choose you this day whom ye will serve; but as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD.Joshua 24:15
One person is a house
Let me say the thing directly, because it is the whole reason this article exists.
A house of one is a house. Not a diminished one, not a version of the real thing, not a situation waiting to be resolved before the verse applies. His grandmother's plate is addressed to him, this evening, at fifty five, with one place set.
Everything he has responsibility for stands under that sentence: this ground, the two hundred acres, the dog, the man who comes on Tuesdays, the road he keeps an eye on, and a fifty five year old man who eats at a table because his wife would have had something to say.
You are the head of a house in every sense that verse uses the word. Psalm 68:6 says God sets the solitary in families, and the setting is His action rather than a description of a shortfall; the same Spirit who bears witness that you are His (Romans 8:16) put a man on that road on purpose.
This is yours right now, with one plate out: a sentence you have been handing to other people for eleven years. Joshua 24:15 is a declaration about direction, and the Spirit who preserved it did not make the number of chairs a condition of saying it.
Eleven years of not looking at the wall
Now the thing his sister accidentally exposed in June.
He stopped looking at the plate about four years ago. Not deliberately; it faded out of his eyeline, the way a thing does when it has quietly become somebody else's.
And the not looking is not about grief, or not mainly. It is about disqualification, which is a quieter and much longer running problem, and disqualification always does this: it does not argue with a promise, it simply relocates it to somebody who deserves it more.
You have never been disqualified from anything by the size of your household. 1 Corinthians 7:17 says as God has distributed to every man, so let him walk, and the walking is in the situation as it stands rather than in the one that was expected; the Holy Spirit who carried that into the letter addressed people in every arrangement there is.
Fruit is not output, and one place at a long table is where the difference is sharpest. Output would be a full house: countable, visible, and not available to him. Fruit is what grows on a man who still sets a table and still keeps an eye on a road, and John 15:4 says the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, in a full house or a quiet one.
So what does staying attached look like this week, since nobody is getting a program from me. One thing. In the ten minutes while the light is still down the kitchen, tell Him one true thing about the plate on the wall with nothing asked for and nothing wanted. Then be quiet long enough for Him to have the last word. Nobody counts that.
So here is what is happening right now, in the kitchen, with the light down the length of it and one plate out.
Eleven years ago the composition of this house changed, and somewhere in the third year you quietly reassigned your grandmother's plate to somebody with a fuller table. This is where that gets reversed, because Joshua's sentence is a declaration of direction and the household is what it covers rather than what qualifies it.
Right now, as you read, that verse is addressed to the man in this kitchen. Joshua 24:15 is a choice made out loud and it covers everything standing under a man, and the Spirit who preserved it brought you to it at half past six with the light down the room.
You are already a house, and the count was never the qualification. Psalm 68:6 says God sets the solitary in families, and the same Spirit who is the earnest of your inheritance (Ephesians 1:14) did the setting Himself.
The mountain here is a painted plate you have not looked at in four years, and Jesus said the faith that speaks to a mountain does not have to be big; it has to be spoken (Matthew 17:20). So speak. Not to God first. To the disqualification.
Declare this over yourself
Say these at the table with the thing done. Your standing to say them is not something the number of chairs decides: you are in Christ and Christ is in you, and a man carrying the King's word does not earn the right to speak it, he is handed it. Scripture is the ground and the Holy Spirit is the power, and the words are not doing the work, He is. Speak first to the verse, then to the disqualification you never once examined, then to the Father. What grows on this ground and in this house after tonight, and when, is His to decide.
- Verse I handed to other people, you are not somebody else's, and you are not too big for this kitchen. It is written in Joshua 24:15 that as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord, and His Spirit put that sentence in the mouth of a man making a decision and not counting heads.
- Disqualification I never once examined, get off this wall in the name of Jesus, because you moved in around the third year and never argued with anything, you just moved the promise to somebody else. 1 Corinthians 7:17 says as God has distributed to every man, so let him walk, and the Spirit who wrote that addressed the arrangement I actually have.
- Father, Psalm 68:6 says You set the solitary in families, and Your Spirit did that setting Himself and did not describe it as a shortfall. I have done one thing tonight for somebody near, and this house serves You.
Joshua 24:15
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