Who Holds The Gavel?

This morning I want to begin by sharing a metaphor with you.  This one has had an effect on me and I suspect it could have an effect on many of you.  Let’s see if I am right. I call this the gavel metaphor.  Here is the picture.  You live your life in a courtroom.  From the moment you get out of bed in the morning, till you hit the sack at night, all of your actions are on trial. 
>Whether you get up early or sleep in is on trial.
>If you have a morning devotional or not is on trial. 
>If you go jogging in the morning how fast and how far are is on trial.
>Your appearance is going to be on trial all day, so it is important to take a shower and dress and look your best.
>Your work or play or school, or chores are all on trial throughout the day.
>Your interaction with your family, kids, parents, spouses, roommates or cats is all being judged.
>All of your words are being evaluated.  Did I say the right thing?   Was my tone of voice appropriate?  Should I have been more direct?  Should I have just kept my mouth shut?  Everything you say is on trial.
>All your actions are being judged.  Did I do enough?  Did I work hard?  Did I do everything I should have done?  Did I not do the things I was not supposed to do?

Your life is happening in a courtroom! Every daily thing you do, no matter how routine or momentous, is being played out in the middle of this courtroom. Now, here is the important part of the gavel metaphor.  Who is in your jury?  As you look up from the middle of the courtroom, where your life is going on, who do you see ready to give a verdict? The fundamental question is who is holding your gavel?

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Now you may be scratching your head a bit and wondering where in the world did Tim come up with this metaphor? “I thought we were supposed to be talking about Joy this morning?  Aren’t we on the 2nd Fruit of the Spirit?”  Well, we are.  Our joy is based upon who is holding our gavel.

“You are constantly making judicial appointments. You are handing out robes and gavels. You are constantly on trial because you place yourself on trial. Every day is your day in court. Every man is your judge. Every disapproval is a new ruling, another sentence.”  - David Augsburger –

Who do you place in your jury?  To whom have you given your gavel?

>It could be everybody.  You could live your life trying to live up to every person you meet?  Do you ask the question, “What will others think?”  What will others think if I dress like this? What will others think if I act like that?  What will others think if I say this?  When we place any and everyone in our jury we give up any chance for joy because (Here is a secret.) you can’t please everyone.  You are going to be found guilty!

>Well, perhaps, you only place your friends in your jury.  When you look up from the courtroom of your life to you see all of your friends holding gavels?  “It is important to have friends.  I need to have friends.  If I don’t please my friends, I’ll lose them. I have to meet their expectations.”  Friends are great.   But true friends don’t want or need you to put them in your jury.  Peers are really terrible people to place in your jury.  There is no joy with all your friends holding your gavels.

>”Surely, my family is supposed to help me to do right and shouldn’t they keep me from doing wrong? Family makes good jurors, don’t they?”  Not really.  They are there to help, but not to stand in judgment.  If you live to please a spouse or a parent or a child or a cousin, nephew, step-sister or even grandpa, you place them in a vertical position over you and not in a position to be a healthy family. 

You end up equating praise with love and criticism with rejection.  You place that family member in a place where you invite criticism and only hear rejection.  Thus you hear the gavel sound, “Guilty!”  Joy is usually crushed by placing even loving family members in your jury.  You end up only feeling joy when praised and there is never enough.  If you live for praise and are in fear of their criticism; you place your joy in the hands of others.  You give others power over your joy and you end up typically the victim. 

>”I know,” someone says “I will be my own judge. I will hold my own gavel.  I will judge my own actions.  I will decide whether to announce guilty or not guilty on myself.”

I don’t know about you, but my judgments of me are always… suspect.  I am either rationalizing my actions; “I am not as bad as others.  There is a good reason why I did that.  It was someone else’s fault that I did that.”  I justify myself too easily. 

Or, what happens most of the time, I am way too hard on me.  I beat myself up with my own gavel.  “I’m an idiot! Why in the world did I do that?  What was I thinking?  I am a low-down-good-for-nothing-slime-dog!”  When I give myself the gavel, I tend to smack myself with it and there is no joy in that. 

>”Here is the solution.  I will live gavel-less. I will walk out of this courtroom metaphor and I live my life the way I want to. I reject your gavel metaphor.  I’ll sing, “And I did it my way…”  I will reject praise and criticism from everyone.  I will ignore my friends and family.  I will do what I feel like doing and I won’t even judge myself.  No one will be sitting in my jury. I refuse to be judged” Does that sound like a solution to finding joy to you?  I think that is just a path that ends up ticking everyone off and being amazingly selfish.  It sounds strangely like pure-de-old rebellion.  I doubt there will be joy at the end of that road. 

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Through out this year we have been studying the letter to the Galatians.   And strangely enough this question, “Who is in your jury?” is what Galatians is about.  Paul went to Galatia and shared Jesus with Gentiles there.  They experienced the joy of knowing forgiveness and acceptance! 

Galatians 1:3-5 Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ,  who gave himself for our sins to rescue us from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father, to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen.

These Gentiles were rescued from their evil age and got grace and peace!  Wow!

Galatians 4:13-15   As you know, it was because of an illness that I first preached the gospel to you.  Even though my illness was a trial to you, you did not treat me with contempt or scorn. Instead, you welcomed me as if I were an angel of God, as if I were Christ Jesus himself.  What has happened to all your joy?

Well, the agitators showed up and sat down in these Gentiles’ jury box.  “You are not right with God unless you are circumcised.  You are worthless, until you shapeup and start following the Law of Moses.”  These agitators enslaved the Galatians by striking the gavel and pronouncing them, “Guilty!”  And they took away their joy. 

So, as we come to the 2nd Fruit of the Spirit; joy, what Paul is talking about in this joy is… who is holding your gavel. 

There is an interesting side note.  I was dusting off my sermon on Joy from 1997 and the point of it was the difference in happiness and joy.  I was going to say this morning that Joy is the bedrock stuff of having a solid relationship with God and happiness, happens.  But because we are placing the Fruit of the Spirit in the context of Galatians, it dawned on me Paul was not talking about happiness or that kind of joy.  He was really talking about allowing the judgment of others to destroy the community’s joy.   So, I had to start all over again write a different sermon.  Isn’t that an interesting side note? When we place the Fruit of the Spirit in context it chances their flavor.  

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Anyway, back to the question at hand; who should we put in our jury box?  Who should hold our gavel?  I suspect you have already anticipated the answer because you know; Joy is a fruit of the Spirit.  Therefore, the Spirit should be the one holding your gavel. 

Galatians 4:4-7  But when the time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under law, to redeem those under law, that we might receive the full rights of sons.  Because you are sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, "Abba, Father."  So you are no longer a slave, but a son; and since you are a son, God has made you also an heir.

Because of what Jesus did; he redeemed us from the law – or any other courtroom rules – and placed the Spirit into our hearts!  We should not have any law or any self-appointed lawyer sitting in our jury box.  The Spirit is, instead, in our hearts and what is his job there?  Sanctification!  He is the one whose job is making us more like Jesus.  That is no one else’s job!  The Spirit is holding your gavel and banging it with all kinds of enthusiasm and declaring, “You are NOT GUILTY! You are a son!” That is where we find joy!

Galatians 5:1-5  It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.  Mark my words! I, Paul, tell you that if you let yourselves be circumcised, Christ will be of no value to you at all. Again I declare to every man who lets himself be circumcised that he is obligated to obey the whole law.  You who are trying to be justified by law have been alienated from Christ; you have fallen away from grace.  But by faith we eagerly await through the Spirit the righteousness for which we hope.

We are free!  No one has the right to sit in your jury!  You should never place anyone in your jury, but the Spirit.  If you do, then Christ is of no value; you will be alienated from Christ; you will fall from grace.  All the joy of your life will evaporate!

But with the Spirit holding our gavel, we can eagerly anticipate being made right!  We can experience not only the “Not Guilty! You are Sons!”  But, we can also look forward to the Spirit working his sanctify power in us! 

Here is my definition of Joy.   Joy is living who we are to the Spirit. 

Who are we? From the verses we just read we are:
>We are redeemed.  Christ died to take you out of any legal system.  No one can sit in your jury because you are not under any of their laws.
>We are free.  We are free from answering to others.  No one can sit in judgment, unless you let them.  We don’t. 
>We are graced.  The death of Jesus keeps on gracing us!  We live forgiven; no need for a jury! 
>We are being sanctified.  We allow the Spirit to hold our gavel and he will work sanctification in us.  Sometimes that may involve him telling us we are wrong or sinful.  He works that out!
>We are sons who can speak to God as Abba Father.  Wow, that is joy. 
>We are heirs.  One day, when this earth is remodeled, we will walk hand in hand into eternity!  If we can keep that big picture in our minds; how could we not be full of joy?
>We are Spirit-filled. The Spirit lives in us and produces joy in us when we reject all other jurors and allow only him to hold our gavel! 

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Let’s not miss how this fits into the context of the Fruit as the antidote to church fussing.  Listen to another quote from “Caring Enough to Confront.”

“When you are permanently off trial, when your judges have been reclaimed as friends, equals, colleagues, then you will notice that a key difference begins to occur in most of your relationships. You no longer wield a gavel over others. When you are off trial, your friends, enemies, coworkers will be acquitted as well.” – David Augsburger –

When we allow only the Spirit to sit in judgment, he produces joy in us.  That allows us, in turn, to offer grace to those around us.  Do you see the paradox there?  Joy is the antidote to discord because when we experience the Spirit’s joy we step out of other people’s jury boxes and grant them grace as well!  As a community we need to allow the joy of the Spirit to help us let go of each other’s gavels.

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Let me end this sermon with a practical exercise.  Use the gavel metaphor positively.  When you begin to feel your joy diminishing, look up and see who you have put in your jury.  Then mentally walk over and gracefully ask for the gavel back and walk over and hand it to the Spirit.  Then remind yourself who you are to him:
Redeemed, Free, Graced, Sanctified, Son, Heir, and Spirit-filled.  You can keep the Spirit, and only the Spirit, holding your gavel, by keeping who you are to him in your heart! 

Los Alamos Church of Christ
September 20, 2009