Gavels

With several other people from Church we spent yesterday in Court witnessing the criminal trial of one of our members.  I won't go into detail here, if you know about it you need none, if you don't it's really not your business.

 

I see Jesus in everything.  Even sitting in that courtroom I saw a vision of the trial we will all face.  We will stand before the right and perfect Judge.  Satan our accuser will bring the indictments.  Our sin.  If we are found guilty on even one of those points we are condemned to an eternal Hell.  It's not popular to talk of this, but I'm not looking to be popular.

 

Here's where the vision gets good.  The judge says, how do you plead?  Without a word guilt is all over us.  We are sin.  We deserve eternal punishment.  We deserve to hear the Gavel come down and the word Guilty pronounced.  No defense attorney in the world can save me.  No amount of evidence.  No clever legal maneuvers.  No long list of character witnesses.  Even Mother Theresa stood at the bar.  Even Pope John Paul II.  Even James D. Kennedy.   They stood before the Judge Guilty of the penalty of eternal death, guilty of sin.

 

BUT THEN.

 

The advocate.  Much better than anyone who ever appeared on the fictitious Boston Legal could be, THE advocate stands before the Judge.  He is perfect, He is Sinless and he has an "IN" with the Judge.  Somehow in some supernatural way He and the Judge are ONE person.

 

The Judge is the Advocate and the Advocate is the Judge.  The courtroom is amazed to see what happens next.  The Advocate asks the defendant, the fully guilty defendant to rise.  When he does, the Advocate somehow embraces the defendant and in a flood of red, blood it looks like, the defendant is hidden within the  Advocate.  The Judge looks at the Advocate and says, I see no sin.  Innocent.  The gavel bangs, Satan loses again.  The accused walks free into an eternity of Passionate Worship of the One who set Him Free.

 

He doesn't owe a bill, he doesn't owe his life, he owes his eternal devotion which he happily pays. 

 

That's how it will be for all of us and unless we are hidden in Christ we will hear that gavel come down, guilty.  And the Judge Advocate will with a tear in his eye have to turn his face as the accusers demons haul us away.  He wants to never bring down the gavel as Guilty.

 

This differed a great deal from the outcome of yesterday's trial.  Only the Mercy of God and of a Human Judge will keep this man from Prison.  There will be those of us who will stand and testify of his humanity.  We will tell of the good works the man has done, his heart, his family, his life, his affiliation with a Church.  All that may be interesting but it may mean nothing.  We will be hopeful but we are only human.  The verdict is still guilty.  No matter what good things you or I have ever done, no matter our upbringing, no matter our history, no matter our church membership, we will all stand and be found guilty.  Because we are.  There is only ONE difference.  We have an advocate who takes upon himself all our sin in his blood.  Without that, no matter how good our life is or was we are doomed.

 

This will take the true deliverance of the Lord and only Intercession thru the Holy Spirit will things change for the better for my friend to avoid Jail.  We can only avoid Hell if we have all our sins paid for in full.  That is not our ability.  It's only Jesus.  Not Buddha, Not Mohammed, Not Krishna, Not Oprah.  They can't save you.  They aren't well connected with the Father Judge.  Only Jesus.

 

When the sentence comes it will be terrifying.  Not as terrifying as the sentence a person who does not believe will hear when it is too late and he hears that gavel fall.

 

GUILTY!