The Completeness of Forgiveness Isaiah 43:25
Last Sunday at the Lord's super I began what will be a four part study in forgiveness. In it we are going to look at our responsibility to forgive others but before we can do that we need to have an appreciation of what it means to be forgiven by God and to receive that forgiveness ourselves.
Last Sunday we began by considering the amazing fact of forgiveness considered in the light of our heinous rebellion against God's majesty. Forgiveness is never a truism. It is never something that van is taken for granted. Sin merits punishment. Punishment is therefore the logical result of sin. Forgiveness so astounding grace and it is to be received with open jawed amazement. The kind of who could ever have expected it wonder of Psalm 130 when the psalmist sassy, 'yet there is forgiveness with you,' and then surprisingly for us he adds, 'that you may be feared.'
We saw on Sunday that forgiveness means that we have been separated from our sin. Our sin has been dismissed from us and it no longer identifies us before God. We are freed to enjoy a new understanding of ourselves as people who are loved by God.
This morning I want us to remain focussed on the forgiveness that God shows to us and the results that it has in our lives but I want to move on further from the truth that we have been separated from our sin to consider the truth that our sin has been removed from the divine memory. I want us to consider the completeness of forgiveness.
You see it is possible to be truly grateful that we are no longer bound to our sin. But if our sin is still lurking in the shadows then we will live anxiously. And if our sin can be recalled at any time or if our sin can colour the way that God regards us then our joy in our salvation is hardly unmingled joy. There would be an element of uncertainty, a fear of incompleteness about the forgiveness God bestows upon us unless we had the truth before us this morning plainly taught in Scripture that God annihilates, blots out and refuses to remember all sin, which is truly repented of. 'I even I am he who blots out your transgressions for my own sake and remembers your sin no more.'
If we grasp the completeness of or forgiveness then we would result in both a humility before God as we acknowledge that this great good has all come from Him and also a new confidence before God- confidence in prayer readiness to engage in Christian service and freedom from paralysing doubt.
Forgiveness is a complete. Look now at how these verses close the door on any lurking fear that God's forgiveness of us is incomplete.
First of all it shows us that the very worst of sins are forgiven.
Second it shows us that sin is not only forgiven but it is forgotten. The haunting memory of sin is no longer to be feared and thirdly God guarantees these truths. The completeness of forgiveness is not conditioned in any way by our being worthy of it either before or after we receive it.
1. The Worst of Sins are Forgiven
Many people allow themselves to be kept by a sense of their guilt from the remedy that is found in Christ. Perhaps it is one hugely grievous sin, which looms large before them all the time and they say to themselves there is no forgiveness of r this. Or after becoming a Christian they have flash backs to this one patellar sin and the doubt creeps into their mind. Could God really forgive me for suing such a terrible thing? Will it not rise up again to haunt.
Look for your encouragement at the sins that Israel was guilty of and which are listed before God's gracious words to her.
Despising God. Rico Tice tells of a conversation he had with a school friend's wife at a dinner party. Aware that he was a minter she said by way of making conversation, 'The most important thing about religion Rico is that it is there when you need it.' Rico asked her how she would feel if her husband treated her like that. After a pause she replied, 'Well he wouldn't.' Yes but supposing he did he insisted.' This time through gritted teeth, she replied, If he treated me like that I'd murder him to which he replied 'We all how do you think God feels about you using him only when you need him?' To which she replied,' Look I'm sorry but that is just not the away I see religion. Religion to me is that God is there for me I the rough times.' That describes the way many non-Christiasn treat God as someone who is there as a very last resort.
But what if we didn't even acknowledge God to that extent. What if we deliberately spurned rejected him. Would that contempt not live on to haunt us as Christians. Look at Israel's situation. She was prayer less, you have not called upon me O Jacob.'
We as parents do not want our children to get into difficulty but should they do so the one thing that we want is that they should call onus. We hope that they would see that we loved them and would do all that we could to help them. And it is so painful for a parent when a child spurns them by even asking them for help when they are in trouble.
But that is what Israel did towards God. God was the last person on Israel's mind when she was in trouble. She looked to al sorts of alliances and never called on the name of the Lord. If we are hurt as parents went our children ignore us how much more so is God. A nod yet that is how we have treated him. But God promises to forgive our prayerlessness.
Israel also mocked God by responding with a yawn to the most holy things. Isaiah accuses the people of wearying of God. So maybe did some of us. We treated holy things with disdain. Sermons were to be endured or yawned through, Sundays to be endured keeping up appearances. Like the Pharisees of Jesus day we deserved the blame of Jesus 'This people honours me with their lips but their hearts are far from me.' even this insulting and disparaging conduct God has promised to forgive.
Israel is accused of being thankless and so were we. 'You have not brought to me burnt offerings nor honoured me with your sacrifices. Ingratitude is an ugly sin. God gave us many blessings. Perhaps he intervened directly in our health or in preserving from an accident and yet we lived thankless lives. We sought to block God out from our view; we refused to acknowledge him in any way. He was airbrushed from the picture as far as we were concerned.
We wonder how God could ever forgive us for treating him with such contempt. And still there is worse. Our contempt of God is worse for two reasons.
First of all we knew better. Israel had every opportunity to repent and act rightly for she had the law and the prophets. The privilege of a Christina home meant that our sin in despising God was aggravated by the fact that we knew better; we were sinning against the light. We did not have the excuse of ignorance.
And secondly we went on and on for many years despising God, ridiculing His salvation ignoring his kindness, feigning boredom and disinteredness in hi gospel. We provoked God in a way tht we would find unforgivable and we did it for a long time.
Surely this is the worst kind of sinning- to sin against the light that we have and the warnings of our conscience, to sin in such a way that we mock God and treat him with contempt. Surely we would say this is the behaviour of a reprobate and there can be no forgiveness for this. And yet the Bible assures us that there is pardon for the very worst of sinners and the lowest form of sins. 'Though your sin be as scarlet they shall be as white as snow.' Because it is the Lord who is the one who gives pardon. It is Jesus who has provided satisfaction to a holy God with an infinitely valuable sacrifice able to cover all your sins. 'I even I am he who blots out your transgressions.'
2. Sins Blotted Out
The completeness s of God's forgiveness is shown here by the promise that our sins have been annihilated, erased removed from the ledger so that there is no sign of them there at all.
Now if your child is making heavy weather of he maths homework then the book will be a reminder to all the past mistakes. The rubber eraser will not completely remove the evidence of previous attempt, the red marks of correction pen will be seen even if they have been crossed out and ticked. When God blots out our mistakes he does a perfect job. There is no trace left. No tell tale smudge pointing to past failures, no clue even that we had been anything less than perfect. He blots out our transgressions completely and then he determines to forget.
This truth about God's forgiveness is expressed in various parts of the Scriptures. Isaiah speaks of casting all the prophet's sins behind his back in Isaiah 38, in chapter 44 He uses the picture of the cloud hiding something from view and the morning mist disappearing completely as the rising sun gains in strength, 'I have swept away your offences like a cloud your sins like the morning mist.'
In Jeremiah the Lord says, 'Their sins I will remember no more.' And at the end of the prophecy of Micah three is the wonderful picture of God casting sins into the depths of the sea.' In all of these pictures there is the promise that God no longer sees our sins. The God who does marvels who created the world is able to do a marvel that we are slow to credit him with he is able to forget sin. Now I cannot explain that to you at a logical r philosophical level.
How can it be that God to whom all time is equally present not be aware of sin? We simply have to receive it in faith that God for whom nothing is impossible has decreed it to be so. 'I am he who blots out your transgressions for my own sake and remembers your sins no more.'
Now there are three consequences of that for our relationship with God.
First of all we have a new standing before God.
Sin does make a mark on our character. It leaves an ugly stain. God sees that stain and he regards us as defiled. We are prevented from his presence and we will be barred from heaven one day.
But forgiveness removes the blotch of our sin. We have a new status before God, a new character. Of course blotting out our sin is only part of what God does. He also gives us the righteousness of Jesus. But deep in our hearts it is the blemish of our sin we are most anguished about.
This was David's cry in Psalm 51 where he is grieving over his sin with Bathsheba, 'Have mercy on me O God according to your unfailing love according to your great compassion blot out my transgressions; wash away all my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin.'
That is the cry of the heart that has been answered by God's pardon. God no longer regards you in the light of your transgressions for they are blotted out. He has no memory of them. E regards you now only in the light of His love shown in His Son.
Secondly God will not harbour suspicion towards you in the future.
Your sin no longer figures in God's assessment of your future usefulness.
Imagine for a moment a continuation of the parable of the prodigal son. A year down the line after the younger son, the prodigal has come back the father has an important mission. He has money to invest in an estate at a great distance from the home farm and he wants one of his boys to take the money and ride with it and invest it in the estate in which he wants to buy an interest. Does he say to himself, well the younger one has shown that he is not one who can be trusted with money? I better not take a risk with him again. I will give it to the older son. No he does not think that way at all. The prodigal's sins were forgiven. They are no longer recalled so as to make the father suspicious of him.
And it is the same with us. Your past before you become a Christian does not colour God's attitude towards your future. It is wonderful to see people whose lives were unproductive people even whose lives were harmful to themselves and others being made new through the blood of the cross and being entrusted with young lives in a Sunday School class perhaps or with the preaching of the word of God. The past is no longer there to make God act towards us with suspicion.
And thirdly our sins are not going to rise up at the last day to haunt us.
We need not fear that our sins will blight that glorious day when Jesus appears as Saviour and judge. Christians will be judged but I believe our judgment will be a judgment with respect of our reward. The work that we have done for Christ will be put to the test in order to see if we built solidly for him. But what God has promised he has forgotten he will not recall, what God has said he has blotted out he will not make appear.