April 8, 2013
David wrote in Psalm 32:1 & 2 (NIV), “Blessed is he whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sins are covered. Blessed is the man whose sin the LORD does not count against him….” Loosely translated, it means “You’ve got the happies when your sins are totally gone, when you don’t have to be burdened down with them anymore!” For those who have felt the weight of their wrong-doings and mistakes through life – and you can’t seem to get rid of that weight – the happies too often are far away. And, yes, happies is the right word here, since “Blessed…” in the Hebrew in verses 1 & 2 means happy in plural form – happies!
But the Lord doesn’t want us to be burdened down with our sins. Jesus took them upon Himself when He hung on the cross. It says in II Corinthians 5:21, He “…was made sin for us….” He became both sin and sinner before the Father, and the Father poured out His full wrath upon the Son instead of upon us who deserved it! We are forgiven! We are free! So why do so many Christians have such a hard time believing that – accepting that – and continue to carry those life-destroying heavy sins?
We looked at Psalm 32:1 & 2 and Psalm 103:12 in the last two blogs which show us we are Forgiven and Free. Now let’s look at the gem of two more examples from Micah 7:19 (NIV):
You will again have compassion on us; you will tread our sins underfoot and
hurl all our iniquities into the depths of the sea.
The two examples here come out of the same thing…
• Compassion – In the Hebrew, the idea is to love someone with compassion. It actually means to fondle, that is, as one would lift up and hold a child who needs attention.
The first example is actually couched in a military term, and it is seen more readily in the Authorized Version of Micah 7:19: “…He will subdue our iniquities… ”
• Subdue – In the NIV it is translated “…tread … underfoot….” It means to tread down or conquer, subjugate. It is what would be done with an enemy that was totally defeated.
Our sins have been tread by God underfoot as a defeated enemy! Our iniquities have been subdued by God, totally conquered and subjugated under His feet! So why do we dig them out of the dirt into which they have been God-stomped and carry them around with us, making us dirty and weighing us down?
The second example in Micah 7:19 is recorded thus in the NIV: “You will … hurl all our iniquities into the depths of the sea.” Do you know that the deepest part of the sea is the Mariana Trench in the western Pacific Ocean? It has been measured in its deepest part at 36,201 feet! That’s almost seven miles deep! Mount Everest is almost five and a half miles in height. You could cut that mountain off at its base, turn it upside down and dump it into the Mariana Trench, and you would still have 7,175 feet of water – over a mile and a third of water – above it!! And down there, somewhere in those dark and cold depths, our sins are buried, never to be seen again by man or God! Corrie ten Boom, that great Dutch lady who was imprisoned in a Nazi concentration camp for helping to hide escaping Jews, wrote in her book, Tramp For The Lord, “When I confessed them [my sins] to the Father, Jesus Christ washed them in His blood. They are now cast into the deepest sea and a sign is put up that says, NO FISHING ALLOWED.”
If God won’t fish your sins out of the deepest part of the sea, and if man can’t ever locate them to bring them up, why should you still try to retrieve them and carry them around? Let your sins be buried at the ocean bottom, deep in the Mariana Trench!
Christian, our sins are gone! We are Forgiven and Free! Live like it!