Jury Duty

I was Juror #4. I had received the summons weeks ago, had called as requested to see if there would be a trial, for most of the charges are adjudicated before the trial date. There was a delay while negotiations continued. There was only one case on the docket. Seeing a jury pool often changes the outcome.

This time it didn’t. We were given written information on being a juror, exemptions verified, given a number and we swore to serve. Then comes voir dire, a second process to eliminate jurors. The questions are designed to note preconceptions of guilt or innocence.

The defendant had no attorney. When testimony was complete, it was obvious there was no defense.

The indictments laid out the specifics of the law, the details of non-compliance and the penalties. We jurors found there was no reasonable doubt that the testimony was factual, the law had been broken. The judge was legally required to follow the penalty assigned.

The Bible speaks of judgment, and most people ignore it. Many do not believe in God nor the Bible, so therefore the judgment will not apply. As our example defendant, they believe there are no consequences to their action. It doesn’t apply to them.

I disagree. I believe God’s word when we are told there will be a day of judgment, and it will be factual and complete, to the point that:

But I say unto you, That every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment. (Matthew 12:36 KJV)

It is described:

I will therefore put you in remembrance, though ye once knew this, how that the Lord, having saved the people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed them that believed not. And the angels which kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation, he hath reserved in everlasting chains under darkness unto the judgment of the great day. (Jude 1:5-6 KJV)

Some will pick out a verse and say “Christ said he came not to judge!”:

And if any man hear my words, and believe not, I judge him not: for I came not to judge the world, but to save the world. (John 12:47 KJV)

While true, it is incomplete. Read further:

He that rejecteth me, and receiveth not my words, hath one that judgeth him: the word that I have spoken, the same shall judge him in the last day. (John 12:48 KJV)

Paul writes:

So then every one of us shall give account of himself to God. (Romans 14:12 KJV)

I shall do so, I think with trembling, but with the one difference that I share with so many others who will stand before Him, worshiping uncondemned:

He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. (John 3:18 KJV)