Sunday, May 24, 2015

May 25, 2015

"Then he says, “I will never again remember their sins and lawless deeds.” And when sins have been forgiven, there is no need to offer any more sacrifices. And so, dear brothers and sisters, we can boldly enter heaven’s Most Holy Place because of the blood of Jesus. By his death, Jesus opened a new and life-giving way through the curtain into the Most Holy Place." Hebrews 10:17-20

"And I will forgive their wickedness, and I will never again remember their sins.”Hebrews 8:12

“I—yes, I alone—will blot out your sins for my own sake and will never think of them again."Isaiah 43:25

The first holiday of the Summer season, Memorial Day. Several things will be predictable, most people will overdo it and most will get sunburned.

It is great that we have a holiday set aside to remind us of the cost of our freedom and to remember those who gave their lives in the struggle for freedom. There have been a lot of wars and a lot of deaths. 25,000 in the Revolutionary War, 570,000 in the Civil War, WWI - 117,000, WWII - 408,000, Korea - 53,000 and Vietnam - 58,000. The Gulf Wars are 5,000 and counting.

Saturday night I went to a very moving ceremony at the Fredericksburg National Cemetery where 15,300 soldiers lie buried. It is a solemn place to visit any time of any day, but on Memorial Day moments after sunset with every grave marked by luminaries and a trumpeter playing taps - it was deeply emotional moment. That sight is etched on my memory forever.

You cannot drive past a cemetery this week-end without seeing decorated graves. It is important to remember.

Now that Memorial Day has come, I want to take a moment to comment not on what we should remember, but on something that has been forgotten. Not only do we focus on what has been forgotten but on Who has forgotten. God, Who is the all omniscient and everlasting God has chosen not to remember something - our sins. That is huge!

How can that be? How can God forget?

He has chosen to forget what is forgiven. Our Scriptures remind us that when we receive the forgiveness of sins through His Son Christ, He not only forgives those sins but He forgets about them!

So, during this week-end of remembering honor the memories of those who died for your freedom, also pause to be thankful for something that has been forgotten - your sins!

May 24, 2015

In yesterday's post I mentioned six things to remember about God's grace that will help you win in the battlefield of your heart and mind. Here are six more powerful things to remember about God's grace in Christ Jesus.

(7) HE PASSED OVER YOUR SIN - We now come to the 7th, 8th, and 9th things that God did with our sin, all of which are found in Micah 7:18-19.

“Who is a God like you, pardoning iniquity and passing over transgression for the remnant of his inheritance? He does not retain his anger forever, because he delights in steadfast love. He will again have compassion on us; he will tread our iniquities underfoot. You will cast all our sins into the depths of the sea” (Micah 7:18-19).

To “pass over” is to pay no heed; it is to ignore; it is to act as if whatever is passed over is no longer present. But this doesn’t mean God ignores or pretends that our sin never existed. The reason God passes over our sin is because he has laid it on Christ. He did not “pass over” Jesus when he hung on the cross. He lingered in wrath as the Son of God was exposed to judgment that we deserved. That is why now God always and forevermore will “pass over” our transgressions.

(8) HE TRAMPLED YOUR SIN UNDER HIS FOOT - To “trample” or “tread” underfoot something is to exert your authority over it. It is to put on display the victory you have achieved over whoever or whatever your enemy may be. For God to tread underfoot all our sins means that he has defeated it. Its power over you is done away. Its authority to rule your life is undone. God has conquered the threat sin poses. He has taken steps to remove its condemning power. It no longer has the capacity to steal your joy or rob your value or determine your eternal destiny. And the way in which God goes about making this point and driving it home is by asking you to envision in your mind your sin on the ground, in the dirt, beneath God’s feet as it were, as he treads upon it, stomping it into oblivion.

(9) HE CAST YOUR SIN INTO THE SEA - The prophet Micah here draws upon Israel’s history to make his point. Nothing weighed more joyfully on the minds of God’s people than the story of how he delivered Israel from bondage in Egypt and then conquered Pharaoh and his armies by drowning them in the Red Sea. Listen carefully to the language of Exodus 15:4-5 that describes this incredible event: “Pharaoh’s chariots and his host he cast into the sea, and his chosen officers were sunk in the Red Sea. The floods covered them; they went down into the depths like a stone” (Exod. 15:4-5).

There is simply no escaping the fact that Micah is appealing to this victory of God over the enemies of his people to portray what God does in defeating and subduing and forever setting us free from the guilt and punishment of our sin:

How much more graphic must God be before you enter into the joy of his forgiving love? All vestige of condemning guilt is gone. Again, “just as God said He put our sins behind His back, so here He says He will hurl them into the depths of the sea. He wants them to be lost forever, because He has fully dealt with them in His Son, Jesus Christ” (Jerry Bridges, Transforming Grace, 40).

(10) HE BLOTTED OUT YOUR SIN - “I have blotted out your transgressions like a cloud and your sins like a mist; return to me, for I have redeemed you” (Isaiah 44:22).

“Hide your face from my sins, and blot out all my iniquities” (Psalm 51:9).

In ancient days debts were hand-written with ink in books. When a debt was paid by the debtor his name and the amount of the debt was blotted out by one holding the debt. All that remained was an ink blot where once a debt was recorded.

That's what the blood of Jesus did to your sins once you trusted Him for salvation!

(11) HE TURNED HIS FACE AWAY FROM YOUR SIN - We know this to be true because this is one of the requests made by David when he repented for his transgression: “Hide your face from my sins, and blot out all my iniquities” (Psalm 51:9).

Don’t look any longer on my failures! Let not your eyes gaze on my wickedness! Perhaps the best way to understand this is to consider its opposite. When people do not repent and trust God’s provision for forgiveness, he doesn’t turn his face away; in fact, he looks intently and angrily at their sin: “For my eyes are on all their ways. They are not hidden from me, nor is their iniquity concealed from my eyes” (Jeremiah 16:17).

But for those whose trust is in Christ, God forever and finally has turned away his face from all our transgressions. He cannot see them. He does not catch so much as a passing glance at our sin.

(12) HE SIMPLY REFUSED TO REMEMBER YOUR SIN - “I, I am he who blots out your transgressions for my own sake, and I will not remember your sins” (Isaiah 43:25).

“For I will be merciful toward their iniquities, and I will remember their sins no more” (Heb. 8:12; cf. 10:1).

·       But how can this be true if God is omniscient………….

·       How utterly different that is from us………

God, on the other hand, promises never to remember. He will not brood over our sin. He will not reflect upon it, think about it, contemplate it, analyze it, or ever again bring it up to himself, to you, or to others.

SO – ALWAYS REMEMBER – BE MINDFUL OF THESE 12 THINGS GOD HAS DONE WITH YOUR SINS THAT HAVE BEEN CONFESSED AND REPENTED OF!

The power of remembering is the power to remember His grace instead of your disgrace!