MICAH 7:19 – “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.”
THEME OF THE DAY: THE DEPTHS OF THE SEA. What is behind the scripture and theme of the day is not difficult to discern. It points to our greatest need in life and eternity – forgiveness and what God does with forgiven sin. A good introduction is from one of the Psalms of Ascent. It provides how desirous God is to forgive us undeserving sinners. Go slowly through each verse and rejoice . . .
“A Song of Ascents. Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord! O Lord, hear my voice! Let your ears be attentive to the voice of my pleas for mercy! If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand? But with you there is forgiveness, that you may be feared. I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in his word I hope; my soul waits for the Lord more than watchmen for the morning, more than watchmen for the morning. O Israel, hope in the Lord! For with the Lord there is steadfast love, and with him is plentiful redemption. And he will redeem Israel from all his iniquities” (Psalm 130).
Forgiveness is easy to read of, easy to say, easy to quote verses about, but in reality, it is difficult to grasp. Not because it isn’t true. The difficulty is the opposition of the devil. He is the accuser – And I heard a loud voice in heaven, saying, “Now the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of his Christ have come, for the accuser of our brothers has been thrown down, who accuses them day and night before our God (Revelation 12:10). In his accusations about us, he not only wants to bring condemnation to us before the Lord (he cannot) but to move us to doubt God’s willingness to forgive us. This fiendish activity of him is also seen in the Old Testament . . .
“Then he showed me Joshua the high priest standing before the angel of the LORD, and Satan standing at his right hand to accuse him. And the LORD said to Satan, “The LORD rebuke you, O Satan! The LORD who has chosen Jerusalem rebuke you! Is not this a brand plucked from the fire?” Now Joshua was standing before the angel, clothed with filthy garments. And the angel said to those who were standing before him, “Remove the filthy garments from him.” And to him he said, “Behold, I have taken your iniquity away from you, and I will clothe you with pure vestments”” (Zechariah 3:1-4).
Despite the onslaughts of Satan, God desires we believe He takes pleasure in forgiving our sins and He has so dealt with them in such a fashion that we may know assurance of forgiveness. This is wonderfully illustrated by a familiar figure from recent church history – Corrie ten Boom.
Corrie ten Boom was a Holocaust survivor who maintained a glowing, yet difficult testimony for the Lord Jesus. In her book Tramp for the Lord, she states her favorite mental picture was of her forgiven sins being cast into the depths of the sea. She would point to an extremely important and joy-producing truth about forgiveness that is often difficult to comprehend but truth, “God takes our sins – past, present, and future and dumps them into the sea and puts a sign that says, ‘No fishing allowed.’”
PRAYER: Father, I praise You for a forgiveness of my sins that I could not earn or deserve.
REFLECTION: God delights in forgiving sin. Believe Him, not the lies of the devil who wants us to doubt Him.