Nobody Handed You That Verdict

Court opens in Deborah's kitchen at five in the morning and it has done for eighteen months.

Nobody else knows it is running. She gets up before the house does, because she always has, and she stands at the counter waiting for the kettle in the half dark, and by the time it clicks off the session has already started.

She is the prosecutor. She is very good at it. Eighteen months of practice and she has the opening down to about four words now.

She is also the clerk, so nothing gets lost. Every relevant item is on file and cross referenced and can be produced instantly. She can find a thing she said in a conversation two years ago inside a second and a half.

She is also the judge, which is where it gets bad, because the judge is not neutral and everybody in the room knows it.

And she is the defendant, who does not speak. In eighteen months the defendant has not once been called. There is no defense in this court. There has never been a defense. There is a charge, and there is a verdict, and there is a woman standing in a kitchen with a cooling cup of coffee looking at nothing.

By six she has her coat on and she is entirely normal. She is funny at work. She is good at her job. Her sister rang her last week and cried for twenty minutes and Deborah was exactly what her sister needed and said the right thing at the right time and meant it.

Nobody knows about five o'clock. There is no reason anybody would. There is nothing to notice at six.

Here is the thing about that court that she has never once thought about.

It has no authority. It was not convened. There is no case number, there is no jurisdiction, there is nobody sitting behind her, and the woman who runs it has no standing to run it. It exists entirely because it has been happening for so long that the happening feels like proof it is legitimate.

And this is where I stop writing about Deborah, because you have a five o'clock.

Maybe not the kitchen. The parking lot before you go in. The ten minutes in the shower. The moment your eyes open. I am not going to ask you what the charge is. Not once, not in a guess, not in a category. It is yours and it stays yours.

Look at who is speaking and look at why

I want to put a verse in front of you and I want you to notice two things in it, and the second one is going to be more use to you than the first.

I, even I, am he that blotteth out thy transgressions for mine own sake, and will not remember thy sins.Isaiah 43:25

First thing: I, even I. Twice. The Hebrew doubles it because the sentence is claiming exclusive right. Nobody else does this. Nobody else can. And that includes the woman at the counter at five in the morning, who has been doing a job she does not have the authority to do.

Now the second thing, which is the one that will get you out of the kitchen.

For mine own sake.

Not for your sake. Not because you have suffered enough over it. Not in proportion to your remorse. God gives the reason and the reason is Himself: because of who He is, because of what His name is, because of how He has always been. The clearing of the record is fastened to His character and not to your performance, and there is nothing you can do to make it more secure and nothing you did that made it less.

So take this into the half dark, on your feet, right now. You are not the accused in that room, and Isaiah 43:25 says God blots it out for His own sake, and the Holy Spirit is the one saying so in you, this morning, before the kettle has even clicked.

And then there is the last clause, and it is almost too much. Will not remember thy sins. Not cannot recall, which would be nonsense. Will not: a decision, a refusal, an act of will. God has chosen not to bring it up.

Which means every five o'clock session for eighteen months has been reading from a file that the only Judge with jurisdiction has already closed. The written word says the case is not being brought, and the Spirit of God has never once opened it.